Back to school: Calendars, notes help families stay organized

The text came just minutes after I dropped the kids off at school:

“OMG I forgot my lunch can you bring it please???”

It was from my son, Jack.

“It’s on the counter at home,” he added in a follow-up text, along with a frowny-face emoticon.

It was only the second week of school, and already the disorganization and panic had set in. Fortunately, I had time to fetch the lunch and get it to Jack before the morning bell, but I informed him it was the first and last time I’d get him out of that particular pickle.

I debated doing it even this once, since I’m usually a big believer in natural consequences, but the boy has been astonishingly hungry lately, and I was feeling charitable.

That evening, I scratched out a list on an index card – homework? instrument? lunch? money? water bottle? – and taped it to the door we see on our way out to school every morning. Now that out-the-door note serves as a last-minute reminder for the kids to make sure they haven’t forgotten anything important.

I’m no organizational expert – though I recently had an epiphany about dinner menu planning – so I’m always looking for great tips to keep my family organized and on track once the school year starts.

If you have a child in school, you know about the avalanche of paper that happens this time every year: newsletters, lunch menus, fundraising packets, reading lists, calendars, book fair catalogs and that stack of spiral notebooks you bought because they were only a quarter apiece. Papers to read, papers to store, papers to sign and return.

Deniece Schofield, author of “Confessions of a Happily Organized Family,” loves the household notebook approach: a three-ring binder with plastic page sleeves and tabbed dividers. Label a tab for each child, stick important papers in there, and presto! Just like that, you’re more organized than me.

She also urges parents to use the FAT method of sifting through papers – file, act or toss – and to check kids’ backpacks every day, or at least regularly.

Fine ideas, all of them. My two kids are in high school, and I’ve been meaning to get going on that household notebook since about second grade.

But I have my methods, and they work for me. Not unfailingly, of course, but most of the time.

One is a calendar with plenty of room to write – I prefer one called the Monster Grid – and markers in every color imaginable. We hang that in the kitchen to record our appointments and obligations, large and small.

If a child tells me they signed up to bring snacks to something on Sept. 24, I stop them short after, “Mom, I signed up for snacks” and direct them to the calendar. If it’s on the calendar, I will see and abide, I tell them. Not on the calendar? Dead to me.

At the beginning of each school year, I gather the school district calendar, class schedules and band and orchestra handbooks and mark all the dates – holidays, school in-service days, concerts, etc. – on our kitchen calendar. This is a major accomplishment for me, one I usually celebrate with a glass of shiraz.

And now this new thing, the out-the-door note? I’m proud to report that in the five or six days since I posted that index card, neither of my children has forgotten those things on the way to school.

Small victories.

This story was originally published August 26, 2014 at 2:43 PM with the headline "Back to school: Calendars, notes help families stay organized."