Back to School Organization

It’s almost that time!!! Now Moms….don’t get too excited (ok I am just a little bit) and kids, it’s time to get everything you’ll need for your first day!! What do I think about when a new School year begins, well of course there’s a lot of shopping to do (especially with 3 kids). Another thing I think about is how to arrange each child’s things so nothing gets lost (and eliminate the fight over “that’s mine”)! Here are a few Back to School organization tips I have found to be useful, and a fun repurposing activity to do with your kids as they prepare for the new School year too!

When it is time to go Back to School shopping I know one thing…..I am ONLY going to one store! With three kids I need a one stop shop where they can pick out a cute new backpack, lunchbox, some clothes, School supplies, items the Teacher requests for the classroom, and grab a few things I need at our house at the same time….Back to School shopping at Walmart is the place to go! It didn’t take long for my kiddos to grab the things they needed, wanted, and load their new backpacks up with new School supplies for the year (I can’t believe I have 1 in High School now)!

After the School supplies were chosen we went to grab a few bundles of Kleenex for each child’s Teacher (they can never get enough of these). I noticed that on the 3 pack with the Back to School picture on the front, it had an EXTRA box top! There were several other items (list here) that offered DOUBLE the Box Tops for Education as well and since I was in need of a few I snagged them on this Walmart trip too! If you’ve participated in the Box Tops program you know just how fabulous and easy it is to earn money for your children’s’ School!

If you haven’t participated in the Box Tops for Education program yet let me tell you about it. On Kimberly-Clark products, like Kleenex and others, there is a little piece like this one that you cut off. Since my philosophy is “there is a place for everything, and everything in it’s place” I made a Box Tops for Education box a while back so they wouldn’t get lost, it’s easy to do!

Once you’ve emptied a Kleenex box you can use it as a Box Tops for Education collection container! Once it is full you won’t even need to empty it, just take it into your child’s School and hand it over knowing you’ve earned a lot of money for them (they are worth $.10 a piece) and all you needed to do was “snip snip snip”…..easy! We dressed ours up with some colored popsicle sticks we found at Walmart on an earlier trip, and just hot glue gunned it to the front to give it some style. 😉 Here is another easy Back to School organization tip you can do at home with an empty Kleenex box and some of your empty Scott toilet paper rolls or Viva paper towel rolls too!

Once you have an empty Kleenex box, cut out the plastic part that holds the tissues up, then cut diagonally on each corner of the box like this.

Then use some clear tape to tape down the sides, they will lay flat since you have cut the edges of the box in the prior step. This and the next few steps help to “pretty up” our Back to School organizing station!

You can either use clear tape or a glue gun for this part. I used a piece of ribbon and put one dot of glue underneath, then wrapped the other side of the ribbon to the front and put another dot to hold it together. I got all of these things at Walmart while we were doing our Back to School shopping, including the things to make the label, so they are not hard to find.

Like the Box Tops for Education label, we used colored popsicle sticks we found at Walmart, taped the back so they would stay together, and wrote each child’s name on the front with a permanent marker. I used a hot glue gun to adhere this to the box but strong tape may work as well.

This part is great to get the kids involved. Collect empty toilet paper and paper towel rolls and have your kids paint them. We just used an inexpensive acrylic paint we found at Walmart on our trip, used a disposable table cloth that could get dirty, and let them paint away!

Once they’re dry just put 5 across and 3 deep for a total of 15 rolls. I cut some of the rolls in half so I didn’t need to use as many, as well as making shorter organization tubes for the crayons so they could be grabbed easier.

And there you have it! Two great ways to repurpose Kleenex boxes, empty toilet paper rolls and/or paper towel rolls into a Back to School organization box……and Box Tops for Education container! They are easy to do and finding DOUBLE Box Tops for Education at Walmart on these products helped us to start filling up that box even before School begins….their Teachers will be thrilled about that!