End of School Chaos: Organized

I know some of your children are already out of school, so the chaos may still be lingering. My daughter's last days are this week. It seems at the end of the year, regardless of the age, supplies and projects start coming home. This happened at our house last week. Here is the pile forming...

I'm not sure if you can tell, but some of those supplies requested at the beginning of the year were not even used! My daughter said she did use graph paper and index cards, but when it came time for those items she just got them from the teacher. I really should send them back with her to donate to those teachers. I'm sure some of those supplies came from their own pockets!

Just this morning, I decided to bring up an empty bin to put near where they drop their stuff. I then placed that forming pile inside the bin. I will direct them to place all school supplies they are done with inside the bin for later organizing. And by later, I mean Friday afternoon when school is over!!

On Friday, we won't just be going through the supplies, but the mountains of paper being held in their backpacks. I took a peek in my youngest daughter's bag.

Can you see how much paper is stuffed in that binder? I'm sure nearly all of it will be recycled. I sometimes will pull a piece of art or a finished paper they wrote as a keepsake. Since they are in middle and high school they can generally do this task themselves. When they were younger I would do nearly all of it. At some point we did it together so they would learn how to make those decisions on their own. We don't need math worksheets, or notes from school. We don't need rough drafts, broken pencils or pens/markers that have run out. Yes, we should pull paper from notebooks so it can be recycled. I like to keep the leftover spiral notebooks for my own list making. :)

I will post more photos and tips about decluttering and organizing the end of year chaos as we get ours done. Be prepared. It will get a bit messy before it gets better! Is your end of school chaos cleaned up? Do you have a pile of school supplies strewn about in corner taunting you? Will you reuse any of your school supplies next year?

I posted the final wrap up on the school organization here.

I have linked this post to A Bowl Full of Lemons. If you are visiting from there, please leave a comment!