Practical Back-to-School Storage Solutions to Get Organised this Autumn

Practical Back-to-School Storage Solutions to Get Organised this Autumn

It’s that time of year again. When kids swap their jeans and Converse’s, band t-shirts and holey jumpers for a shirt and tie, blazer and trousers. When hours glued to smartphones and Xbox’s, late mornings and even later evenings are begrudgingly forgotten for a good eight hours’ rest and a seven am alarm.

September. Back to school. A new term awaits. Autumn is the season of transition. It’s cyclical. Ripening and harvesting exist alongside decline and ageing.

Parents far and wide, novice and experienced, recognise that their home is about to change. Homes likely feel eerily quiet and somewhat larger than they did just last week.

It’s a season that symbolises life anew. And with that comes opportunity. To get organised. And with the kids back at school and an influx of coats, school rucksacks, PE kits, and art portfolios, keeping your home organised can easily turn into one heck of a challenge.

What you need is a plan. A practical guide to getting organised

Don’t worry. We’ve got you covered.

Everything is in its rightful place

When kids come home from school, what’s the first thing they do? Most likely, they will dump their coats and rucksacks, PE kit, and portfolio in the first place they can. Usually the door. But this doesn’t have to be the case.

Create a space in the home for kids to store their school belongings. It has to be accessible. It is easy to store belongings. Remind them that it’s their responsibility to pick up after themselves and, like you, keep the home orderly.

Why not create some cupboard space, or, at the very least, hang hooks on the wall for kids’ school belongings? If your son or daughter is a sportsperson, athlete, or likely to come home covered in mud, keep storage space away from carpets, rugs, etc. Kids usually aren’t overly aware of cleanliness when they come home from school.

If you’re short on storage square footage, leasing a self-storage unit to create more space in the home is a great idea. Store all your summer essentials. Patio furniture. Summer wardrobe. Summer duvets and basically everything that you won’t be using as the autumn months unfold into winter This will create more space and promote an orderly home.

Be prepared

Kids can be forgetful. They forget, lose their school supplies an awful lot, and let’s not talk about how often they unintentionally ruin their uniform, covering white shirts in mud and ties with splattered paint.

Any parent knows that they need to be prepared when the school year starts. To have a spare tie, pair of trousers, shirt or two, even a laptop or tablet, spare chargers, USB cables, and just about any other essentials you need, in case their kids come home short on a few belongings that they left home with in the morning.

Since you’re in the process of getting organised, streamlining the living space, and getting a more orderly home in anticipation of the school year ahead, why not invest in some storage boxes? They’re great storage solutions because you can store pretty much anything. From spare devices to PE kits, sports equipment, ties, shoes, even stationary

If you’re short on space, don’t worry. You don’t need to invest in a handful of 48-litre storage boxes. A spare cupboard or even a drawer or two can be just as useful.

Conversely, if you’ve looked around your home trying in vain to conjure a few square feet of storage somewhere, only to discover that most of your cupboards look like a Tetris puzzle, investing in a self-storage unit before your kids, inevitably, acquire more belongings throughout the year may well just make your home much more comfortable all year round.

Declutter as much as possible

Most of us think of spring as the season to declutter. To organise. Say goodbye to everything that you’ve kept for a rainy day for months, even years. But there’s no reason why you can’t use autumn, the new school term, to finally have that big declutter.

Keeping hold of old school rucksacks, even uniforms that kids have long since grown out of, does have some merit. If nothing else, some parents attach sentimental value to their son or daughter’s first school jumper, but in reality, this just takes up unnecessary space in the home. If you want to treasure memories attached to belongings, what do you keep and what do you discard? Surely, keeping hold of that fluffy toy that your son or daughter never goes anywhere without is more sentimental than a school uniform, right?

Let’s not also forget that as the years roll by, kids accumulate reams and reams of paper across numerous exercise and text books. Once the school year has ended, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll want or need this again. So, what do you do? Keep everything stored in a cupboard, the loft? Surely, it’s better to do your part for the environment and recycle the paper?

Finally, if there’s anything with significant sentimental value attached, or if you’re not 100% sure that you want to recycle those stellar school reports and don’t have the space at home, you can always put this stuff in storage until you decide what to do with it.

Make sure school supplies are stored in an easy-to-reach area

When kids come home from school, it’s fair to say that they’re not as organised as they can be. School supplies can be strewn across multiple rooms. The inevitable “Where’s my…?” (Insert school supplies here) question will likely be asked over and over again.

Making sure school supplies are accessible and easy-to-reach for kids of all ages is essential to being organised in a chaotic home, especially if you’ve got several kids in school simultaneously. Now, apart from making it routine for kids to tidy up and store their school stuff in the same place, storing everything they don’t need from season to season is key to being organised.

We’re talking about winter coats, scarves, PE kits, rugby and football kits, cricket and athletic school uniforms, and just about anything that won’t be used for months at a time.

Why cram all this stuff into a cupboard, one that’s already bursting with belongings, when you can just lease a self-storage unit? Your home will be more organised, and you’ll save so much time and stress when looking for a PE kit, uniform, coat, or whatever else you need throughout the term.

When the seasons change, it’s time to switch around. In to self-storage goes winter stuff, and out comes summer stuff. One trip to your unit, and hey presto! An easier term for parents and kids alike!

Create work space and compete with storage

When the bell rings for the end of the school day and your kids arrive home, oftentimes that doesn’t spell the end of the day. Especially for older kids. In fact, depending on their ages, kids can spend an hour or three doing homework. Therefore, having sufficient work space in the home will encourage studying, better grades, and a more prosperous future.

Kids sitting at the kitchen tables, laptops open, and pencils at the ready might seem like a simple solution. Until it comes time to start preparing the evening dinner, you’d be better off creating a workspace for kids in their bedrooms, maybe even the study or family room, if you can spare the space.

A work space isn’t a good work space without storage. A place for kids to store their textbooks, workbooks, and any equipment they need for their studies. If you’ve already allocated that space to different home storage of any description, it may well be time to put it into self-storage. You won’t regret it when your kids are content doing their homework!

Get organised today

We know the autumn school term has barely begun, but there’s no time like the present to get your home organised. Start the new school year off on the right foot and give your kids a springboard to enjoy and achieve this year!

Organising your home, streamlining your belongings, and creating valuable space are some of the things that parents can do to encourage and support their kids in their studies. Self-storage is paramount, and there are few better times throughout the year to get organised!