Narrow down your child's art collection to a handful of favorites. Take pictures of everything else to keep in an online album.

here are three things I like to do to help my family get organized every fall:

1. Sort through your child’s artwork, school papers, and other projects and decide what to keep and what to toss. During the school year, I put all of my daughter’s school work in one large plastic bin. I always plan to go through it more frequently, but more often or not it’s overflowing by June. Then summer hits and between camp, vacation, BBQ’s, and other summer fun, the bin sadly collects dust. In October, I set aside a few hours to go through and discard most of the schoolwork (do I really need every spelling test or math quiz for the permanent record?) keeping only report cards and special notes my daughter’s teacher may have written. Since my daughter cares the most about her artwork, I enlist her help in deciding what to keep and what can go. Finally, we go through the keep pile and narrow it down to her masterpieces, which must be preserved, and then we take pictures of everything else to keep in an online album.
2. Corral those beautiful photos. Summer fun means lots of photographs; photos that sadly don’t always make it off of the camera or the flash drive. Use a rainy fall day to gather all of your photos, from various camera phones, your digital camera you only pulled out on the 4^th of July, and family and friend’s online albums. Save all of those to one folder on your computer or cloud storage site. Better yet, upload your favorites to a photo printing website or local photo store and get those beauties in print. Don’t let two years pass by with the same photos still in your camera (true story).
3. Tackle your child’s closet. Growing up in Hawaii, we had one season of clothes with maybe a sweater or two thrown in for when it was really cold (anything below sixty-five degrees). So, I was fully unprepared for the planning, purchasing, and storing that four seasons of clothing entails. Add in a constantly growing child and you can see why I panic when the winter catalogues start coming in the mail. To minimize the panic attacks, twice a year, in the fall and the spring, my husband and I team up to tackle my daughter’s closet. First, we store seasonal items that still fit, then we bag up items that do not fit and can be donated, and repurpose those few items that are too gross to give away. Then, we pull out last year’s fall and winter clothing to see what still fits, and we hang or fold them for easy access. Finally, we make a list of the items we will need to purchase for the upcoming season.




What are you fall organizations tips? Share your advice by commenting below.