Organized for School

Last week was our first full week of school. Little K is involved in more activities than ever (during school and after), and while she is pretty responsible (if I do say so as her proud mother), it can be a lot for an 8 year old to keep track of.

I knew I needed to give her some tools to make organizing her days easier, when she accidentally went to school wearing Flip Flops. That's not such a big deal, because Flip Flops are actually allowed at her school. The problem was - is was a day that she had P.E. To make matters worse, she had picked out her outfits for the entire week (including sneakers for the P.E. days), she just got them mixed up and confused. OOPS.

Here is our solution.

We decorated Clothes Pins to coordinate with her room, and marked them with the Days of the Week.

We made another set of decorated pins with all her activities that require special clothing choices (Gymnastics, Dance, P.E. etc.)

The pins can be moved around as needed when her schedule changes.

The mesh hanging organizer is from IKEA. It's designed to hang over a closet pole, but we attached it to a hook in the ceiling (installed with a toggle bolt for security).

There are 6 cubbies in this organizer, perfect for each day of the week and one for the weekend.

The weather here is pretty predictable (hot and sunny), so it's not hard for us to make clothing choices for the entire week, although now that Little K is stepping up her fashion style, it sometimes takes us longer to agree on her choices, so we don't always get the entire week picked at once.

Then there are those days that I'm way behind on the laundry and there is nothing clean left. This system also helps me avoid scrambling through the dirty clothes hamper.

We started with regular wooden clothes pins (they can be found in the craft store, or in the home section of discount and grocery stores).

Then we painted them to match her room using basic acrylic paints.

This is her bedspread from Land of Nod. We chose Pale Pink, Lime Green, Aqua and Orange for the colors of the Clothes Pins. The Mesh Organizer is in a dark Fuchsia Pink. Her walls are painted Aqua.

I pulled out my scrabooking supplies to look for decorating inspiration. There are endless options on how you can jazz up your clothes pins, but for our project we stuck with Ribbons, Buttons and Flowers cut from craft felt.

Everything is simply hot glued to the clothes pin.

The Key Tags are from the Office Supply Store. The wire attachment was replaced with coordinating Embroidery Floss thread through the existing hole in the tags.

I created the days and events using one of my favorite Fonts (CK Darling) and printed them out on white card stock. A 1 inch circle punch is the perfect size to fit inside the metal tag ring. Punch out the days/events and glue them to the tags. Thread the floss through the spring of the clothes pin, tie a knot at the end and add a dab of glue to prevent it from being pulled out.

I'm hoping this week will go a bit more smooth, with no Wardrobe Malfunctions.

Now, if I can just figure out something to make with these adorable little clothes pins! I'm such a sucker for things in miniature.