Kids Responsibilities Charts

It has become apparent in recent weeks that we needed a new system in our household. We have used our after school routine chart for quite a while now and it has been great for focusing the kids on what needs to be done when we get home in the afternoons.

Lately however, it has become obvious that there wasn't enough detail on it and I was getting the same questions every afternoon regarding what needed to be done before they could have their snacks or enjoy some leisure time.

In addition to this, I discovered that Rosie has been getting homework most weeks from school...and not doing it or showing me! I can't believe I fell for the excuse in hindsight. I mean, I am a teacher and know all about the "Nope, no homework this week, Mum" excuse! I guess I just hoped that my daughter wouldn't be the one using that excuse. lol

Anyway, moving on....it was time to get some much clearer expectations in place and I remembered a little chart I had found on Pinterest recently. There is a great blog called Pinch a Little Save a Lot, which is my kind of blog. It is full of clever organising ideas and there are also some fantastic free printables on there.

This little chore chart can be found there in a very cool boy or girl option, but best of all, it is able to be edited and personalised for your own needs! I sat down this week and thought of all the responsibilities I wanted the kids to work on and they each have their own personalised list. I printed the charts on thicker card and then had them laminated, so we can use a whiteboard marker to tick the checklist each day.

They are now on the wall in the kitchen and even after a couple of days, I have noticed a positive change. They love seeing what needs to be done and being able to check it off their lists. If they fulfill their responsibilities on the checklist then we discuss as a family a special reward, such as a family movie night or another treat. Fingers crossed that this works for us...and that the homework is handed in on time from now on! :)

Getting My Organising Mojo Back!

It has been quite some time since I tackled an organising project, but I am trying hard to get my organising mojo back, so I started with this little project one afternoon this week.

It has been over a year and a half since I last tidied my plastics cupboard, and since then we seem to have acquired quite a lot more plastic! My kids go to a Enviroschool, which means they discourage the use of Glad Wrap and unnecessary packaging in their lunchboxes, amongst other things.

This means we have lots of little storage tubs and containers that we use in their lunchboxes. There was also the issue of a new baby in the house and trying to accommodate all the extra feeding paraphernalia that goes along with that.

I had got tired of the steriliser cluttering up the bench so I now have a dedicated baby shelf in our plastics cupboard to keep everything tidy and off the bench. A project like this is also a great excuse to throw out all the mismatched and poorly fitting containers and lids, as well as items you don't use.

I had several round containers which I never used, not to mention four ice cube trays, which I think were left over from my baby food making days many moons ago. I put the good items into a bag for charity and threw out the rest of the stuff we didn't need.

It was also a good chance to reorganise our cookie cutters into a larger container (how did I get so many of these?) and create new storage boxes for our plastic bag clamps and ice block moulds.

So plastic cupboard reorganisation take two has finished and I hope this is the beginning of more projects to come! :)

Organising a Pregnancy

A few months ago I blogged about the organising system I use for vouchers and coupons. It is still working really well for us so I decided to use the same technique to organise all the pregnancy information I have been inundated with over the last few months.

I used the same type of mini folder I used before and decided on some categories which would help to organise all the information I had. Some of the categories I chose included Pregnancy Diary, Blood Test Forms, Scan Forms, Test Results and a place to store pregnancy and baby specific vouchers I have received.

I have found this a fantastic system which keeps all my important information together in one place. This means that when I have a midwife appointment or scan, I just grab my folder and no longer need to go hunting for scan forms or other loose documentation.

It is a quick, easy and inexpensive solution to something I struggled with a bit during my last two pregnancies. I was forever writing things down on tiny bits of paper and then misplacing them. I am sure a more organised person wouldn't have need for such a system like this, but for me it has really worked. :)

Oh and look what I picked up for the nursery. As soon as I saw this Zuny giraffe a few weeks ago, I fell in love with it. It is actually a paperweight but I thought it would be nice touch in the new baby's room. :)

Christmas Card Organising

I know that Christmas has well and truly gone and we are now two weeks into the new year...but I thought I would share my method for storing Christmas cards.

Being a school teacher, I receive a lot of cards every year and they are all very special to me. Some of the words my students and their families have written have brought tears to my eyes and I cherish these and wanted to find a way to store them securely.

Every year I have bundled them up and placed them into my Christmas storage box but this year I found a better solution. My scrapbooking hero, Becky Higgins, has produced these fantastic pocket pages which fit into your standard 12"x12" album and are PERFECT for storing all your precious cards.

I simply labelled them with the year, added a cute Christmas tag and that was it. I have now added the pocket to the end of the December section of my 2011 Project Life album and all my special Christmas cards have been saved to enjoy in the coming years. :)

Important Phone Numbers Printable

Saturday is my day to tackle the organising jobs around our home and today I thought I would share a link to this great free printable I found. How many times have you gone searching for an important phone number...and wasted a lot of time doing so? Well, search no longer!

The Organised Home is a great website with lots of ideas to help you 'Clean House, Cut Clutter and Get Organised at Home' (love this catch phrase!). My plan this weekend is to hunt down all our important phone numbers and finally bring them all together in the one place and never have to go searching again. Well, that is the theory anyway. :)

Organising Baby and Childrens Clothing

Now, I will preface this post and say that although this is a post about organising baby clothing, this is no indication of any news on my part! lol. I am sharing it simply as a way to organise any clothing, whether it be children's out of season clothes or adult's clothing you can't bear to part with.

As it happens, many of these clothes are favourite things my sister and I enjoyed using with our little ones as babies and are loathe to part with. Some extra special things such as hand knitted items from Great-Grandma in England will be saved to pass down to the next generation but most of it we are saving for my other sister to enjoy at some point in the future.

I have been designated as the one to store it all as we have the room to do so and the large numbers of shopping bags full to the brim were never going to be an effective permanent solution. Much of it was storage at my parents house but they were keen to reclaim back their wardrobes and garage for their own storage! lol. Enter my trusty plastic bins! Good for anything and everything, as any regular reader of my blog will know. :)

The first step is to get all the clothing you want to organise and place it into a large central pile. I set aside some time on a Saturday afternoon while the kids were swimming with Taff, as this whole process can take a while, depending on how many items you have.

I was organising clothing from 0-2 on this occasion so I got four large tubs and sorted it into the following categories: 0-3 Months, 3-6 Months, 6-12 Months, 1-2 Years. Then I went through it all and literally threw all the items into the appropriate tub, depending on the size. I will say that prior to this, I went through everything and only kept the things we really wanted, the rest I put in clothing bins or gave away. This helped to keep the number of items under control.

The next step is to take one tub at a time and empty it out again. Throwing items into the tubs without folding them is great for sorting the clothing into sizes but takes up a lot of room. All you need to do is refold it all into piles of similar items (eg. sleepsuits, onesies, matching sets, etc) and then place it neatly into your boxes. You will fit so much more in by doing it this way.

Finally, label all your plastic tubs with the sizes (or gender, if you prefer to sort it that way) and step back and admire your handiwork! It is now ready for storage in your garage, in a wardrobe or under the stairs, etc.

Hope this helps some of you who may be wrestling with a way to organise all the mounds of clothing in your life :)

Organising Project: Gift Box

Another quick little organising project that I have finally got around to completing. I am not sure why it has taken me so long, it took me all of 5 minutes to put together so there was no excuse really. :)

I have wanted to put together a little gift box for a while now, as a way of storing gifts, wrapping paper, gift bags and cards for times when I need to get a present together quickly. There are times when it seems my littlies are attending birthday parties every weekend and it gets time consuming and tiring to keep making special trips out to buy gifts.

Time pressures also mean you may not always get the best deal and end up paying more than you wanted to, or settling for something that isn't quite right. I have done both of these things on more than one occasion!

The idea behind this little project is that you pick up gifts that might appeal and store them away for when you need them in the future. For example, Harry and his friends love Transformers so when I saw a 50% sale on Transformers, I picked up a few to pop in the box and having them there has saved me several shopping trips on a Saturday morning.

This plastic crate was sitting unused in our garage but you can find similar ones at stores such as Payless Plastics, Briscoes and The Warehouse. They are inexpensive and easy to stack or store in a cupboard or closet.

Just gather together all your present supplies, from cards and paper, to cellotape and scissors and you will have your own portable gift station. It will save you time and money. :)

Easy Kitchen Chalkboard Project

For a long time I have wanted a chalkboard in my kitchen to record my shopping lists and notes. I usually scrawl these on scraps of paper and then go on to lose them in the depths of my handbag or accidently throw them out.

About three months ago I found a super cheap chalkboard from the Warehouse for about $13 so I picked it up and put it away to use at a later date, once the kitchen had been repainted.

Although it was cheap, it unfortunately actually looked very cheap with it's natural plywood frame so a few days ago I decided it was time to finally attack the chalkboard project.

I masked up the board so that I wouldn't get any paint on the chalk surface and then used the leftover Resene Nero to paint the frame a deep black. It looked 100% better once it was painted and I now use it all the time! It is very useful having a place to record notes and lists and for under $15, it was a bargain project.

I have also placed our school routines chart underneath so that the kids can come home and check it each day and know exactly what I expect them to do before snack time. :)

Organising Vouchers and Coupons

A quick little organising project for you today. :)

I am a coupon/voucher girl and the bargain hunter in me always likes to keep any good offers that come my way. From petrol discount vouchers to coupons that arrive in the mailbox, I like to keep them handy for when I need them.

I'll be honest, my previous system involved tossing them on the kitchen bench, in my bag or in the car and they were far from handy or easily accessable. I was forever searching for the ones I wanted, never being exactly sure where they were!

It was starting to bug me and when something starts to bug me, it motivates me to do something about it! I found this great mini file from Warehouse Stationery for a few dollars and spent a few minutes organising all my bits and pieces from around the house so they were all in one central location.

I used my trusted labelling machine to sort everything into categories and the file itself is the perfect size to keeping in the car or in my hangbag. I have found this especially useful for organising vouchers from the Entertainment Book. It is a very heavy book and isn't practical to lug around so I tear out the vouchers I am planning to use in the next few weeks and file them so they are ready to go when I need them.

I also use this mini file for storing important receipts and so far my new system is working well. :)

Project Life Tuesday: School Holiday Planning

I know that school holidays are a time for relaxing, but I am most relaxed when I have a plan! I am very busy during term time so I always try and cram a lot into our holidays and for me the best way to do this is to schedule the things I want to do.

If you do a Google search you can find loads of free calandar templates and I just adapted one to suit my needs. By scheduling in the places we are going to go, appointments and projects I want to work on, I find I can achieve more and make the most of my days off! :)

Kitchen Sink Organisation

Our kitchen sink (or more specifically, underneath the sink!) has been in need of a bit of organising love for quite some time and I finally disciplined myself to tackle this job in the last week of term.

First I thought I would share my latest bargain discovery and these little gems have become my organising best friends. I usually prefer Sterilite products but since discovering these at K-mart, I haven't looked back.

These storage containers are CHEAP and work out at $1-2 per basket but seem much sturdier than their counterparts at the $2 Shop. They come in loads of different sizes and I have found them really useful for all sorts of organising jobs around the home. :)

Prior to this little project, we had absolutely no organisation going on underneath our sink area. It was simply a case of throwing it in the cupboard and forgetting about it!

While this has worked well for many years, I am trying to introduce more efficient systems in our home, hence the new basket system.

After pulling everything out I sorted it all into categories and then allocated the contents to a basket. Things not only look better now, but it is much easier to find what I am looking for.

And just to prove what a messy lot we are, here is the 'before' shot and the reason why I needed to get this area sorted in the first place! :)

What a mess!