Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Organizing School Papers

If you have kids in school, you probably have a mountain of informational papers from the school. Here's how I solved that problem.
1. I bought a 1" view binder for each of my school-aged kids.
2. I typed their name in a cute font with some doodle clip-art and placed that in the spine of the binder.
3. I 3-hole punched all the general information papers and placed them in the binder. You know the ones I'm talking about...lunch prices, school calendars, classroom wish lists, newsletters, etc.
4. I made a friends phone chart for the front of the binder. I have my child's friends' names, phone numbers, addresses, and the parents' names. When my kids make a new friend at school, we can easily add them to the chart. It's great because my older child can call friends to play and do it all by himself.
5. In the front inside pocket of the binder, I keep awards, photos, and any other special documents we want to keep.
6. In the back inside pocket of the binder, I keep artwork and papers from school that we want to keep. I'm very selective and we only keep the very best stuff.
**Here's a hint: If you have large artwork you want to remember, take a picture of it and place the picture in the binder.

Good luck and happy organizing!

9 comments:

Julie said...

This is exactly what I need. We had Halle's kindergarten screening and I walked away with that mountain of paper work and was trying to figure out the best way to keep it organized. Thanks for the idea. I even have a binder already, so I'm off to organize. Oh, and I love your idea of taking a picture of large art work. Brilliant!!

Brooke said...

Love it!! I have Brandon's assessment today so hopefully i can tame the paper monster from the get-go!

Lisa said...

I love this idea! Your are the guru of organization - love it!

Unknown said...

Wow, this is a great idea to control all the "dreaded papers"! I read through the rest of your blog and it's great! I'm bookmarking you so I can visit again. :-)

FlipFlop Mom said...

cute blog...glad I peeked in!!!

sherbear said...

You have a ton of great ideas!! May I borrow them to post on my blog as well? I will say where i got the ideas from and include a link to here.
If you can pls email me at sherrydeines@mac.com to let me know if it is alright.

Thx

Jennica said...

I do something similar with my kids "stuff" that I have to keep but I do it all in one 3 inch binder and all 7 of us (Harley included) have a tab for that stuff. We call it out "Family Control Journal"... I bet you will never guess where I got that idea ;) I love Flylady!

You are just fun... I am really glad that you do this fun blog!

muirwoodsue said...

Wow, love your blog! I'll keep this one bookmarked.
Sue

Kelly said...

I am known as the "throw away mom" by my family because I don't keep anything like this. Maybe this will help me!