Best Results Organizing

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.

Last week, we talked about back-to-school forms and all the paperwork that the school sends for eventual return. However, there’s a whole huge category of paper that comes home every day, especially in the first weeks of school that you’ll need to read, perhaps review with your kids, mark on your calendars and save for reference.

As we’ve discussed before, keeping it all on the fridge doesn’t work.

This paper tends to come in three categories: papers for long-term reference, papers for ongoing reference, and papers requiring short-term reference or some action on your part.

Papers for Long-term Reference–Rarely used
You will want to review these papers at least once, discuss as necessary with your child(ren) and then file away.

• School/Class Rules
• Dress Code
• Ethics Code

Papers for Long-term Reference–Used infrequently
These are items you don’t need every day, but you’ll want to be able to find them when specific issues arise, as indicated:

• Teacher/Administrative Phone Directories–Use when your child will be out of class for an extended time, when you need clarification on a policy or if there’s a problem that needs attention.
• Extra-curricular Phone Directories–Keep track of which other children are participating in the same sports or clubs as your kids. Use to find emergency car-pool buddies and help your child catch up on missed information.
• Class schedules–When you make doctor, dentist or orthodontist appointments, check your child’s class schedule first. While the entire school day is theoretically important, you’d probably rather your child missed lunch, phys. ed., music or art than math, history or science. Elementary kids may not have a carefully-delineated schedule, but middle- and high-schoolers often have complex “third period on even days in B-wing” schedules that require guidelines for parsing. Confer with your kids to be sure you get it.

Papers for Ongoing Reference
These papers contain the kind of information you may want to transfer to the family calendar, but you’ll still want to keep handy to double-check accuracy.

• Extra-curricular Activity Schedules: rehearsals for school plays, practice schedules for sports and class/activity schedules leading up to band concerts. Set aside time to start marking them on the calendar to get a sense of the weekly schedule right away and make sure there are no carpool conflicts or scheduling snafus. Be sure to consider non-school extra-curriculars like scouting, music lessons, martial arts, and dance classes, as well as religious instruction like Hebrew School or confirmation studies.
• School Lunch Menus (monthly or weekly)–If your kids usually take lunch from home but have a few preferred buy-lunch days, let them pick those out and then mark those days on the family calendar. If they usually buy lunch except on “chipped beef on toast” day, mark the calendar to note those are “bring lunch” days. If your kids have no set schedule, post the lunch calendar on the bulletin board (below), and make reviewing the weekly lunch schedule a Sunday task.
• School year calendar (holidays, teacher conference days, half-days)–Again, mark the whole year NOW. Arrange childcare for days when school’s out or early pickups conflict with your (and your spouse’s) work schedule. Copy this information not only to the family calendar, but also your PDA or work calendar so you can mitigate work/vacation conflicts.
• Field trip/class trip information–You won’t know this information at the start of the school year; in general, you’ll only have a few weeks’ notice. As soon as you become aware, mark events on the calendar to avoid conflicts.

Papers In Transit

• Permission Slips–Don’t just sign them; make sure you mark down where your children will be on the calendar in case you need to reach them in a family emergency. Also use notifications of field trips to make sure you’re comfortable with the school’s safety protocols and precautions.
• Forms and applications
• Class fees–Avoid tears and don’t send small children to school with bills larger than you’re comfortable losing. Pay fees by check or mail/deliver them to school yourself.
• Test/papers requiring parental signatures

Different items work best in different places, depending on frequency of use. For papers you’ll want to reference on an almost-daily basis, you’ll want to use your areas of Prime Real Estate. For papers you’re keeping just in case a question pops up, they can be relegated to lesser-trafficked areas.

1. Start with an IN-Tray…

Horizontal trays are more common, but vertical options can work.

Condition your children to empty their bags daily, upon returning home. Make it a ritual to walk in the door, open backpacks, “turn in” non-homework take-home paper (notes from teachers, class schedules, permission slips, etc.) to the IN-tray, then change into play clothes, and finally have after-school snack-time.

Speaking of snack time, lest Paper Doll be accused of contributing to the childhood obesity epidemic, whether snack-time is a healthy piece of fruit or a yummy cookie doesn’t matter from an organizing perspective, but setting aside time to decompress from the workday–and note: school is the career of the 5-18 set–does. Starting this ritual in early childhood gives your kids a chance to wind down from the stresses of the day, have a little nosh and share their day with you; it’s an excellent way to not only keep in touch with the big calendar items, but to create and maintain a bond so your kids perceive sharing their day with you as a normal part of life. (You’ll thank me when they’re teens!)

If your younger kids tend to forget to bring important papers home to you, keep a gallon-sized zip-lock bag in their knapsacks and tell them that ALL papers go in the bag until you sit together to sort them. (For older kids, just threaten to show up in the middle of the school day. Even if you’re a “cool” parent, this should ensure regular take-home-paper service.)

2) Create a Family Calendar…And Use Other Vertical Space Wisely

Be sure your family calendar is large enough to allow ample room for writing on any given day (including weekends) so you can accommodate information regarding field trips, recitals, carpool, parental travel, babysitting arrangements, etc.

Make reviewing the incoming paper in the family “in tray” part of the daily ritual, perhaps right after dinner, before everyone departs to their own private corners of the house. Also make it part of the weekly ritual–on Sunday afternoons, review all the week’s upcoming events so that school/team/performance uniforms are washed, permission slips are signed and ready to be returned and that the lunch-making schedule is covered.

The family calendar requires vertical space–make sure it’s given a position of importance in the house, like on an oversized bulletin board on the kitchen wall or door. School lunch menus also belong vertical and visible.

Emergency numbers (for the school nurse, the family doctor, mom and dad at work, grandparents and contact data a babysitter might need) also fit well in the vertical space of a family bulletin board.

However, avoid clutter and remember that vertical To-Dos tend not to get “to done”. For parents and older kids, consider a tickler file; for little ones, start them off with a To-Do tray for their desks or a personal bulletin board on their bedroom doors, specifically for their own waiting tasks.

3) Create a long-term reference section.

Remember all those papers for long-term and ongoing reference? You can’t just stick them in a drawer or on the fridge, or it will quickly turn to paper clutter and floozies. Instead, consider one of these two options:

School file–If you have horizontal space either on a kitchen counter or family desk, a small open-top desk-top file box with hanging folders is fantastic.

One hanging folder in the front can hold all the calling lists and phone directories for various schools and activities. Then, keep similar categories of manila folders to group information for each child. If you have kids in multiple schools (elementary, middle, high school), you may want to divide the sections by school so as not to confuse the different dress codes or lunch menus.

School binder–Use subject dividers to keep schools or children categorized properly. As the school year goes on, you won’t have the time or the inclination to use a three-hold punch; instead, opt for plastic sheet protectors and just switch out content each year as material changes.

Both options work well for keeping track of reference material. However, the open-top file box is less labor-intensive, especially if you’re used to keeping your family files in order. Conversely, a binder (or even two, if you have multiple kids in multiple schools) is more portable, allowing you to make calls while you are sitting in the carpool lane.

4) End with an OUT-tray…(and Be A Rocket Scientist)!

IN and OUT baskets, either stacked or side-by-side, ensure a home for everything in transit. Here’s where you put papers set to leave the house to make sure they get into the right hands.

First, be a rocket scientist and build a launch pad for the next day. After dinner but before bedtime, set up a launch pad near the door you’ll be exiting, and put your briefcase or gym bag or diaper bag with all the essentials. Follow the same procedure with your kids: gather the book bags, gym clothes, musical instruments, art projects and get them placed by the outgoing door early in the evening. Put a small table or stacked baskets near the door just for that purpose.

Next, go through the OUT-tray and make sure that permission slips, signed application forms and anything else going back to the teachers, coaches or administrators leaves the OUT Tray and goes into the right kid’s backpack. (Again, gallon zip-lock plastic bags work wonders!)

Finally, do a countdown (5…4…3…2…1!) to liftoff—take five minutes to chat with the little voice inside your head and the little (louder) voices of your kids, and ask about unusual events for the next day. Going hour by hour, you should trigger any “Oh, yeah, I need (lunch money, a signed permission slip, a salt map of the French Revolution).”

Parents, send in your school paper questions and I promise to do my homework and get back to you! Until then, have a safe and happy new school year!