Ready for the kids to head back to the school routine? Us too! In fact, over half of UK parents are in favour of shorter summer holidays, preferring four weeks or less. One thing’s for sure: after the chaos of summer, finding the things we haven’t used for six weeks is an almost impossible task.
Where did you put their uniforms? Did they leave their school library book next to the pool in Spain? And is that a forgotten, now-rancid lunchbox at the bottom of their schoolbag?
If you’re anything like us, your summer holidays will have been defined by impulse buys – clothes no one in the family would ever wear outside a holiday resort, a mess of new accessories and any number of random toys (true purpose: unclear).
But, don’t worry, we’re not alone! Recent research shows that more than 18.8 million households in the UK are in need of a good clear-out, with clothes (47%), shoes (25%) and children’s toys (13%) cited as some of the main items cluttering up our homes.
If your summer clutter makes you want to scream and throw everything out of the nearest window, we’re here to help! Smart storage experts and purveyors of quality fitted wardrobes, The Sliding Door Wardrobe Company, have gathered together some of the best back-to-school decluttering tips to try today.
1. Conquer the loose paper pile
If your kids come home with approximately 17,465 new loose worksheets every week, you’ll be well aware of the leaning tower of paper doom. Swerve the inevitable confused mess of ripped worksheets and give your kids their own binders at the start of the school year.
Everything goes straight in the binder and, if not, straight in the bin. Keep it up and we promise you’ll thank us this time next year!
2. The memory shoebox
Give your little ones an old shoebox to store any treasures from last year – from art projects and favourite pencils to those vitally important stones they found on the playground. Once the shoebox is full, all remaining clutter gets recycled.
Plus, keep the kids distracted for a couple of hours by letting them decorate their shoeboxes. Just maybe swerve the glitter – no one needs that level of stress!
3. The hanger hack
Hang up your kids’ clothes and turn all the hangers the wrong way on the rail. When they wear something, hang it back up with the hanger turned the right way. After a couple of months, anything with a hanger facing backwards gets donated – they clearly don’t wear it often enough.
If your little ones don’t want to get rid of their old clothes, take them to the charity shop with you and show them how their old stuff can be someone else’s new find. Just be careful you don’t leave the shop with an armful of new clothes!
4. Packing cube proficiency
If your kids’ PE kits are always going missing, swap out their sports bags for packing cubes. Small and compact, they’ll fit easily into any home storage space, as well as their school bag. It also makes them much easier to find during the morning chaos, with everything in one place!
Plus, if their sports kit comes home covered in mud, you can wash the packing cube itself in the washing machine too – win, win.
5. Lost-and-found
Do you have small (or large) piles of random clutter in every room in the house? Create your very own lost-and-found box! Any clutter you find goes straight into the box – from hairgrips and hats to socks and old school projects.
At the end of every month, get the whole family to come and claim their lost-and-found items, then put them away neatly. Anything left unclaimed goes straight into the bin.
6. Backpack detox
Every Friday, get your kids to empty everything out of their school backpacks – from pens and workbooks, to empty tubes of lip gloss, lost phone chargers and miscellaneous crumbs. They can put anything essential back, ready for next week – anything else gets recycled or binned.
If your kids aren’t on board with a weekly bag clear-out, do it yourself and put anything not school-related into the lost-and-found box! Anything they find they actually need is sure to be claimed by the end of the month.
7. The toy challenge
Does your little one have enough toys to set up their own shop? How many of those do they actually play with? Challenge them to pick their top 10 toys to keep and tell them the rest of their toys are going on a special journey to help other children.
There are plenty of toy donation schemes across the country – such as The Toy Project and Toybox Project – that give unwanted or unused toys to those who have none. Get your little ones involved in the big giveaway so they can feel more comfortable about sending their toys on this new journey.
8. The uniform drawer
Always looking for a clean school shirt, skirt or trousers? Keep one drawer in your kids’ rooms dedicated to school uniforms only. Pop a few pairs of socks in there as well, along with school ties and any other essentials. You’ll never waste precious morning minutes looking for uniforms again.
If you kids don’t wear a uniform, you can still do this hack with school-ready clothes. Speed up outfit decisions on a morning and avoid them coming down in something totally unsuitable for school!
9. Tackle the shoe mountain
No, they really don’t need five different pairs of trainers languishing at the door. Get rid of the shoe mountain by getting your kids to choose one pair of weekday shoes (make sure these are school-suitable!) and one pair of weekend shoes.
All remaining pairs can be put away in an understairs cupboard or placed in a shoe rack and stored inside wardrobes or cupboards. Take note: if you have your kids obey these shoe rules, all adults in the house must do the same! That also goes for the old pair of crocs you use to put the bins out…
10. The digital declutter
Clutter isn’t just physical mess anymore – it’s gone all 21stcentury and moved online. As any parent knows, the endless school emails and digital permission slips can really get you down – not to mention Barbara’s incessant WhatsApp messages about the next school bake sale…
Create separate email folders for anything school related, freeing up your inbox and ensuring that everything important can be found in one place. Pop a polite message in the parents WhatsApp chat explaining that you’ll be muting the chat for the time being – your kids’ teachers will let you know of anything essential.
Which of these back-to-school decluttering tips will you be trying out first? Here’s to a clutter-free September!
