Organising With Children While Preparing For a New School Year
It’s that time of the year again here in Singapore when our children are getting ready to start school. While it’s tempting to do everything for them to help with this transition (as it might seem like an easier & faster option), there’s a lot to gain when we get our children involved in the process. They’re learning important life skills such as responsibility, problem-solving & completing a project from start to end.
My children and I do a thorough declutter, clean & ‘joy-check’ of all their belongings every 6 months during the summer & winter school holidays. I’ve found these periods to be perfect as our schedules are more flexible and I have enough time & attention to give them. Even though my children are of primary/elementary school age & are fairly independent, I like being around to guide them & make the process a little less overwhelming for them.
Here are 5 KonMari® Tidying-inspired steps to help them prepare their learning spaces before the start of school:
Visualise End Goals First
Discuss with your children what they’d like their space to look like. Get specific! Ask them how they'd like to use each space and item (I ask them questions like, “When studying, what items do you need to reach out for all the time?” or “What do you see on your table once we’ve finished tidying"?”). The more detailed they are with their expectations and goals, the easier it would be to align all their efforts with them.
Bring Everything Out
I can’t stress the importance of “shaking up the energy” of the room when tidying. I’ve always found success in seeing things with a fresh perspective in a space like a clean floor or table. Simply ‘moving things around’ in the same closet or shelf is like playing Tetris with clutter which is NOT what we want.
Bringing all the items from shelves and drawers out also helps to clean them better. Here’s where your children can help by providing them with appropriately-sized cleaning tools and letting them take charge. If you find some resistance from them in doing it alone, clean alongside them in another space.
Categorise Items
Once all of the items are out, create categorical ‘piles’ with your children. These are first separated by academic year (which means one pile with old school year things and one with new school year items). Within each pile, I get the children to make subject-based groupings of books and other items.
Choose Joy and Discard Rest with Gratitude
Now that the two piles are ready, do a swap of book covers (we use the reusable kind) if they’re still in fairly good condition from the old school books to the new ones. Within each subject, encourage your children to see if they’ll still be used for the next year (we even reuse notebooks from the previous year for the same subjects. A new school year doesn’t mean new notebooks all the time!), recycle or upcycle worksheets, and keep aside things for the younger children in the family for reusing (books & uniforms).
When letting go of items, teach them how to verbalise their gratitude with a simple thank you or perhaps a more elaborate one where they can reminisce about how they used them & thank the items for making their time in school enjoyable & comfortable.
Organise & Put Away
Vertically stack items wherever possible with your children in similar categories. Use square or rectangular-shaped containers, magazine file holders, and bookends to store items vertically. Use a label maker, washi tape, or masking tape to name shelves, drawers, and storage solutions for easy maintenance.
As Marie Kondo says, “Clutter is caused by a failure to return things to where they belong. Therefore, storage should reduce the effort needed to put things away, not the effort needed to get them out.”
I have also written a similar post here on ‘back-to-school organising’ inspired by Montessori principles.