My Attempt at Organization

For some reason, January usually brings a desire to purge and organize. We have definitely been doing that in the Dolberry household! I always feel like I am trying to get to a place where everything is in order, because I think things will run much smoother! I am not always good at putting organization into practice, but there are a few things that have made our lives easier and I thought I would share some of them.

One thing we have done is move the kids' chore/behavior charts to the laundry room. They used to be in their rooms. Now, they are more centrally located which makes it easier to check off their lists. The washer acts as a great place to keep our magnetized markers and are in perfect reach of the kids. (I'll be posting about our behavior rewards system soon.)

This window calendar has been a great help in keeping our week organized. It is an old window from my Mom's house. I cut the days of the week out in vinyl and I use a dry erase marker to write in our appointments and schedule for the week. This is great to keep up with practices and meetings. I have also found that having 2 kids in school and 1 in preschool that it was hard for me to remember which child had a party when and when what paper was due for which kid.

Each Sunday, I check their separate calendars and write in anything that will be coming up that week. I'm totally a list person, so this really works for me.

Since I mentioned kids and school, this is another area of my house that helps me keep things under control, for the most part. I blogged about it here and here.

Each kid has his or her own basket where all their school work goes until the end of the week. We will recycle most of it and keep a few pieces to save. Those pieces go in this basket.

Another item that has added organization to my life is my Droid X phone. I have my daily to-do list on it that I love checking off everyday. (I told you, I'm a list person.)

I think this app is called Astrid tasks and it is free.

Another app that I love is Evernote.

It allows me to have several different notes/lists that I can access from anywhere on the internet. It is also free!

So there you have it. What great organizational tips do you have?