Take managing your household to a new level of organization!
As the school year begins, busy families everywhere face the challenge of how to get out of the house on time with kids fully dressed and fed, backpacks and paperwork in order, without losing their minds – or their patience.
The key to keeping your sanity is creating simple routines around the basic tasks that have to happen every morning. The place to start isn’t the morning; making a little time to prep the night before can take lots of pressure off the morning. Take ½ hour before bed to tackle these 5 things:

• Have kids choose their outfits (and shoes!) and set them out
• Decide what’s for lunch and if possible get it packed
• Make sure school bags and homework are ready to go
• If there is an afterschool sport make sure that bag is ready too
• Make sure your own lunch and work supplies are ready to go

Prepping clothes and supplies the night before changes the morning focus to eating and personal care.

• Get up at least ½ hour earlier than the kids to have a little time to think and get grounded for the morning. If you have young kids that need more help with dressing/personal care you may need a little more time
• Make quick but nutritious breakfast that doesn’t require much prep or clean-up such as cereal, yogurt and fruit, or toast w/ a nut butter or other protein spread.

Teach the kids to handle their personal care more efficiently by grouping tasks into 3 groups:

• get completely dressed
• wash face/brush teeth/brush hair
• eat breakfast

You can put the 3 tasks in any order that makes sense for your family; the key is to finish one before you start another. The other key is grouping all the bathroom tasks together as one. This avoids the chaos of running back and forth to the bathroom, landing at the breakfast table half dressed, and needing to finish up all of them before leaving the house.
A few other tips to help keep your household running smoothly:

• As notices come home from school, calendar all school dates into your master calendar so you’re never surprised by an open house, field trip, sharing day, etc.
• Dedicate a permanent spot for backpacks and finished homework to live
• Try out weekly meal planning to streamline grocery shopping

There are many websites that offer pre-printed forms for meal planning and calendaring. Here are just a couple we found from a simple search:
Money Saving Mom: http://moneysavingmom.com/downloads/meal-menu-planners
Simple Made Pretty Daily Routine Checklist: http://www.simplemadepretty.com/free-printable-daily-routine-checklist-for-kids/
These routines are helpful for getting children ready for school but they also apply to people of any age! Having routines for preparing your clothes, supplies, and food for the day make getting out the house in the morning a pleasure rather than a chore.