BACK TO SCHOOL!!!!!

HAPPY FIRST day to school for us. Red is in grade 3 and MM is starting kindergarten.  It was a bittersweet day for us. I was happy to see my kids grow and move on to a new chapter in life but also at the same page I was so sad i cant figure out were the time has gone. Feels like yesterday that i came home from the hospital with red. Well life goes on and mommy has more time to do her hobby and run the house.
On to back to school organizing. We didn't have to do to much in moving around the house. I have been making lunches for almost a year for the Man and this will be year 4 for Red. I have learned some good ways to make going back and getting in the swing of things again a bit easier.

I am not by any means perfect at it, but I figure if we have more good days then "ugh i want to go back to bed days" then we are golden. Here are my tricks to getting out the door on time and the neighbor getting wokeup by me yelling.

1. Get as much done the night before.  for some people this is big, for me i am a morning person so getting up is not bad at all. But i do make sure the kids have there outfit out and paper work ready for me to do what needs to be done. I don't make lunches at night, but i do have a plan for the morning ie. pull bread or something that was already premade.  
2. EVERYTHING has to have a home!!!!  This is a huge thing for having a good start in the morning. Some mornings I am on total auto pilot I don't have to think just do it. I have a small kitchen which I don't mind at all. I just have to think of were everything fits. Sometimes Red wants to make her own lunch. in order to let her, she has to be able to reach everything without making a huge mess or falling off a chair.

This is my most used cabinet in the house. It is the Middle of my kitchen. It is the only space big enough to work on. The bins are from the dollar store and they have been working well for over 2 years.

This bin is the lunch containers. As you can see i have an addiction to Tupperware. The best part is i sell it so I get great deals. Some of the containers are missing because its a school and work day for red and the man.

next is sandwich keepers and cutters. Yes i cut the crust off my kids sandwiches.

this is the kids dishes. all there dishes fit in here. i love the baskets for this because they don't have to be stacked up so nice and neat to fit. sometimes a put some order into it but it works well for us.

Then we have water bottles. we have a lot of them there is around 7 out today for work and school and i keep mine in the fridge. having a lot of water bottles saves money on bottled water and deposit costs but it  so keeps us from using the glass cups up. I don't know about anyone else but if i give the kids a cup for water my sink fills up in no time.

These bins fit behind the water bottles and kids dishes. They hold straw cups and extra water bottles and small kid dishes., i have friends with small kids that come for coffee still so i keep them around.

This is my pantry one bin has bread, wraps and pittas in it. the other one is snacks that are just for school. My husband has a corn intolerance so a lot of this he cant eat so i don't buy a lot of stuff like that but when i do make cookies or rice krispies that's were they go. its so much better then finding empty boxes in the pantry. once a week i get red to fill snack baggies with gold fish and pretzels. makes life a bit easier. We also pre baggie up grapes and celery and carrot sticks. my kids always get sick from "baby" carrots so i just buy regular carrots and cut them up it takes all of 5 mins on my prep day.

 

3. making a plan that works for your family.  You would not go on a hike without a plan or a map right. Having a plan for the week makes the week flow much better. There are some nights i get home with the kids and i am so tiered for what ever reason. Having a plan makes those days way better. i have everything in the house to make that meal. A lot of my meals are 50% already prepped for prep day.  When i am making a plan for the week i am not going to make a large dinner on swimming night or a meal that has to go in at 3 when i have to get the kids at that time. A lot of  people want me to share my plan with them but it is so hard because i am a stay at home/ work from home mom so i have the time to prep the meal when kids are in school.  we also have a few allergies that kind of put a little spin on stuff. red has a shell fish allergy, i am milk intolerance and the man is corn intolerance. the thing with intolerance's is that we can have small amounts of it but we have to be carful not to over do it. Meal planning for me has been a learning experience over the years but i find if i fall off the wagen for a few weeks i feel like i have no control over my days. so even the simpleist plans do wonders in the chaos of family life.  

 

4. plan a prep day. The kids LOVE this day!!!! I do a big prep day when the man is on call on the weekends. The kids love it because this is the day they help me cook. we play cooking show and eat dough and have a great day or at least a few hrs. They each pick a meal or something they want to make for the week lunches. they are the best for adding new things to my meal plans. When they help me it seams like they eat it too. so for example our last prep day was the long weekend before school. We got fruit and veggies bagged. Broccoli cups and oatmeal cookies made.

 

Kids packed them up for lunches the next day and

this was MM first lunch i made him for kindergarten. it took all of 3 mins to toss everything in and we are golden. MM Is what some would call picky I think he just knows what he likes. But he helped put all of it in his lunch and he did eat most of it. I guess eating a sandwich out of a Spiderman keeper makes all the difference.

 

 

Here is my sweeties on there first day of school Ana-belle would not move. She wanted to be part of the picture so bad, it was so funny.

 

well I hope this gave you a guide on were to start making your days run a bit smoother. How do you get out the door without loosing it or being late?

 

SIDE NOTE: the day I was editing this MM (AKA: mommy's monkey) fell off the monkey bars and broke his arm and needed 5 pins in it. Some day you just cant plan. Thankfully his is doing great.