What if you could remember everything?

We all get in a habit of saving little pieces of paper as a reminder.  A business card, a flyer, an advertisement. Unfortunately, it often just ends up becoming paper clutter. One of my absolute favorite solutions to this problem is EVERNOTE. Evernote is a note-taking app that allows you to save just about anything in a way that is searchable, and accessible on all your devices and the web.  Notes are completely searchable, and can be organized into notebooks. Notes can be shared with others, or made only available locally if you don’t want them in the cloud. It’s a wonderful product.  Using Evernote gives you an easy way to deal with all those random little pieces of paper we gather and don’t know where to file.  Even if you don’t remember if you saved that smoothie recipe, you can search “smoothie” and see if you did.

I've used it for many years, I keep finding new ways use it. Having it on my computer and phone has saved me in more situations than I can count. Maybe you have heard of it, even tried it - but haven't yet figured out how to make it work for you. To illustrate its value, here’s a sampling what I have saved in Evernote:

• Packing lists for different types of vacations (has checkboxes!) I print out for each kid to pack their own suitcases.

• Lists of meals the family likes to help with meal planning

• Pictures of plants my neighbor recommended for my front yard (Taken on my phone within Evernote)

• Articles & Recipes I saw on the internet (saved with one-click using the Evernote webclipper feature in my browser)

• Notes from my daughter’s annual checkup (I update the stats each year)

• My dog’s vaccination records (saved as a pdf attached to a note, which also has her microchip and breeding info in it.)

• PDF of my our school directory (easy to search for any parent’s number)

• Picture of the back of my printer so I have easy access to the serial number.

• Contact information for an interior designer I met (take a picture of a business card and it creates fields for each piece of info.)

To help you get it even more, check out this little video dive into my Evernote app:

This video is about Evernote

Evernote markets itself as “your second brain”. The older I get, the more value this has.  :)

The GO File

There have been heart-wrenching stories coming out of California recently, of families being forced to evacuate their homes in a hurry as fire spread across their beautiful wine country neighborhoods.  Emergencies like this are rare, but do happen, and that’s why I have a go-file, and you should too.   

We’ve just finished National Preparedness month, and while it is good time to stock up on batteries and candles, fresh water and other emergency supplies, the go-file is an essential element for emergency preparedness that is often overlooked.

So what’s a go-file?  Well it’s a file that’s ready to go, of course.  A single container to keep your most important documents that you can grab as you leave the house in an emergency.   It can be a file box or a binder (I recommend a nice standout red one) and it should have everything in it you would need to prove your identity, file an insurance claim, access your important accounts.   Many people have fire/flood proof safe for some of these things, and this isn’t meant to replace that – the go-file can have copies in it.   Life in Case* is a great product for this that makes it super easy to get this done.

Once you’ve gotten everything together, consider these additional steps & things to include: a flash drive or DVD with digital versions of the essential documents, and/or a drive or disk with your most precious family photos.

Lastly, consider having an additional backup in the cloud. SafelyFiled is an excellent easy to use online filing system with military level encryption.

The go-file is also an invaluable resource if the family member who manages the important paperwork is incapacitated or passes away suddenly.

Preparing for the worst is never fun.  But being prepared when the worst happens makes all the difference.

Click here for a checklist of what should be in your go-file.

Back-to-School Week 3 – Meal Planning and The Dreaded Backpack...

Well, you're in the homestretch now, parents!  Back-to-school is an opportunity to set new ground rules and expectations with your kids.  Try to establish some new routines that will ease your pain when the school year is in full swing. This week’s post can help with some of the most difficult school organizing challenges.  Lunch and the Dreaded Backpack…! (Cue the high pitched wail...)

Step 1:  School Lunches

There are hundreds of articles and cookbooks looking to solve this age-old problem for you, so I won’t try to completely solve it for you here.  But this simple tip can get help you out most weeks. 

Get with the kids and have everyone list as many school lunch ideas as they can.  If you can come up with 10, you’ve got half a month’s worth of lunches.  Put them on a list, and let each kid pick one they want this week.  Follow the plan for two weeks and then start over.  Boom.  Lunch planned.   Whenever you can, add a few new ideas for variety. 

If you struggle to get 10 ideas, ask your kids what their friends eat.  All parents are struggling for ideas to give their kids a healthy lunch – crowd source it -- Post a survey question on your PTA Facebook page.  Check out Pinterest for ideas and inspiration.  Make one day a week ‘buy lunch day” -- then you only need 8 ideas!  

A product I love are Easy Lunchboxes.  Fill each slot and you’ve got a decent portion controlled balanced meal.

 

Step 2 - The Dreaded Backpack

We all know the scene… kids walk in, drop the bag on the floor, head to the pantry or fridge, then disappear into some alternate universe, leaving you with a pile on the floor.  If you can start a new routine here on the first day of school, you might just conquer this problem.   The backpack is full of things you need to know about.  We’d all love it if they put it on the hook you so lovingly labeled for them, but that may not work with many kids.  Here’s an idea that might: 

Get a big plastic storage bin for each child. Lay it on the floor in your kitchen, mudroom, or next to the front door -- A visible place.   When your kids come home, here’s the routine: 

• Dump the entire contents into the bin. 

• Take out lunch boxes, take to sink. 

• Toss out any trash or old food.

• Take out important papers from school, put in the spot you’ve designated in the family command center  (See Week 1 blog!)  or hand the parent in charge

• Look at homework for the day, set a time to do it. 

• When homework is done, or before bed, repack backpack.

If this routine can occurs whenever kids get home it save you many headaches:

• You’ll have that important paper the day it was intended. 

• The lunch box will get cleaned with the dinner dishes,  ready for the next lunch. 

• Nothing will mold in the backpack.

• Homework will get remembered.

Start with this one on the first day of school, and maybe this year you won’t fear your child’s backpack nearly as much.  You’ll have to repeat yourself for at least a week, and then probably do a refresher.  It takes time to establish habits. A checklist on or near the bin to help them remember what you want done can be very helpful.  And to make sure it happens, consider no TV, video games, or friends until it does.

This is the final installment of my back-to-school series.  I hope you got some new ideas to get you through these first few weeks and make life simpler the whole year.  

And if you need a little help, you can always hire a professional organizer.  :)

Back to School Week 2 - Preparing for the Paper Tsunami

STEP 1 – CLEANING UP LAST YEAR'S FLOOD

You all know what I’m talking about.  The endless flood of worksheets, book reports, permission slips, forms, and artwork that arrive in the backpack daily.  We all feel like we are drowning in it, especially in September.   I’ve got a simple system for you, but before you can implement it, you have to deal with LAST YEAR’s flood.  

99.99% of it is garbage.    

So if you didn’t do this in June, it’s time to get to it.  Gather up the piles of paper in your children’s backpacks, on your desk, your kitchen counter, the back of the minivan… wherever it got dumped the last week of school and have a seat.  Put the recycling bin right by your side and start sorting.   Toss most, and put aside any you aren’t sure about until you finish going through the all of it. Don’t try to decide about those them one at a time, just make a pile.  Hopefully you’ll be left with a pretty small stack of work.   

To help you decide whether it should be kept, ask yourself these two questions: 

1) Is this something I’d like to look at again and again?

2) Is this something my child will get a kick out of seeing in 20 years?  

If the answer is no, then there’s no need to save it, no matter how good it is.  If the answer is yes, you should save it – and I’ll get to how in a minute

Artwork is a special issue.  It comes in bigger shapes and sizes and dimensions. It often feels more special, more important.  The questions to ask yourself about the artwork are similar. 

1) Is this art worth displaying?  If so, then DO display it; don’t shove it in the closet.   Mount it, get a frame, put it on the wall and honor it.    

2) Will my child love seeing this in 20 years?   If not…you know what to do.  

3) Is it likely a very similar piece of art will come home again this coming year…?  

Again – unless you want you home to become an art storage facility in your children’s honor, you have to limit the work you keep.  

I’m a big fan of going digital with kids’ art.  Taking a picture of it and making your screen saver all kid art will allow you to enjoy it all the time without it taking up a lick of space in your basement.  To take it a step further, I’m a big fan of the app Artkive. It’s an app that allows you not only to take the picture with your phone, but identify which child did the work and at what age.  Then if you are so inclined you can upload the work and have a book printed out of all the work. Then, it's – a nice book on the shelf, not a box in the back of the closet.   Artkive even has a ‘concierge service’ – for a fee you can put it all in a box and have them do the work for you.  

What to do with the paperwork worth saving:

For each child, get yourself a nice lidded file box – plastic or metal, ideally not cardboard as this is a box meant to last.  Label 13 hanging folders, one for each year of school and put in the box.  Boom.  You are ready to save stuff until they graduate from high school.  Having this simple box, limited in size, will force you to really prioritize what is truly valuable in all that schoolwork.  And someday, when she’s grown, you can pass the box along to her to see how far she’s come.  My Pinterest Board has lots of samples of this, and the internet is full of free printables like this one you can use to label each folder.   

Great Example from a terrific organizing blog - Bowl Full of Lemons

STEP 2:  Prepare For the Incoming Tsunami

What to do with the paperwork worth saving:

For each child, get yourself a nice lidded file box – plastic or metal, ideally not cardboard as this is a box meant to last.  Label 13 hanging folders, one for each year of school and put in the box.  Boom.  You are ready to save stuff until they graduate from high school.  Having this simple box, limited in size, will force you to really prioritize what is truly valuable in all that schoolwork.  And someday, when she’s grown, you can pass the box along to her to see how far she’s come.  My Pinterest Board has lots of samples of this, and the internet is full of free printables like this one you can use to label each folder.   

Container Store, Long Underbed Box

What to do when the new paper starts flowing in:

Two kinds of paper come home from school. Schoolwork and information.  Two kinds of paper, two different plans.  For schoolwork, I recommend being merciless.  Ditch whatever you can right away.  Then, have a magazine file like this with each child’s name on it.  Schoolwork that comes out of the backpack goes in here.  This protects you too for when a paper that looked unimportant is suddenly needed, and also frees you from the stress of deciding what to do with it.  When that magazine file gets full and messy in about a month, dig through it and toss most of it.   This may prevent you from having to do Step 1 above at all!   If art or paper comes home that is noteworthy – put it in a place of honor for a while – like the family command center board, or the of course, the refrigerator.  When it’s had its day, add it to the annual treasure file box. 

Ikea Kassatt Magazine File

Papers requiring action from parents need a different plan.  You must have a single place for these papers.  I’ll go into more detail on this in next week’s post, but putting them into that important place should be part of your kids’ afterschool routine.  It may be a basket in your kitchen or a file box on your desk.  It may be the bulletin board of your family command center.   But it needs to be a thing you go through daily and deal with. 

With these systems set up BEFORE school starts.  You can avoid that painful rush of paper when it comes. 

Next Week:  Meal Planning and The Dreaded Backpack!