School is Almost Out – Time to Organize Your Home!

Go through your kitchen cabinets and drawers and take out everything you haven’t used in a year and place everything in a box, label it and store it. Throw out expired food and old spices. Your family will find things easier and make less of a mess this summer.
Create healthy snack bins in the refrigerator and pantry for your children and their friends. Create a snack/lunch prep station on the kitchen counter using a square or rectangular basket and include a small cutting board, plastic utensils, napkins and snack and sandwich-sized zip-lock bags.
Starting with your hall or coat closet, remove all out-of season clothing and replace with ample hangers and hooks for summer items. Use clear, zippered boxed-out bags for blanket storage and replace old sheets and towels. Throw out expired personal care products.
Go through your household files and purge all unneeded paper. Collect papers to be shredded and recycle the rest. Create and use a “Tax Receipt” file to make your life easier at tax time.
Cancel any newspaper and magazine subscriptions you haven’t read in a while or opt for the digital version. Stop them from coming into your home and creating more clutter. Register to limit what types of mail and store catalogs your receive at www.thedma.org.
Clean out the garage. Make it safe for everyone and create zones for finding things. Donate or sell outgrown items like bikes and sporting equipment. “Letgo” is a free and easy app/online resource you can use to sell all of your goods.
Improve storage space throughout the house by adjusting shelves or adding hooks. As your children grow, the size of their things change as well.
Back up your computer to an external hard drive or use an online service such as Carbonite. Never worry again about losing important data.
Update your Linked In profile to reflect your accomplishments this year. Check privacy settings on all your social media. Create a “Legacy Contact” for your face book and all social media accounts.
As the backpacks come home for the summer, empty them and store re-usable school supplies in a closet accessible to everyone and launder the backpacks separately, Air-dry on a hanger.
Sell old textbooks at sellbackyourbook.com, cash4books.net or Amazon.com. See more textbook selling sites at www.moneypeach.com. It’s so easy and you’ll probably earn more than selling them back to the school bookstore.
Skip unnecessary trips to college by shipping things back and forth to the dorm using busfreighter.com. Save 60% when you ship 6 boxes or more.
Install a sweater-size clear plastic “memory” bin in each child’s closet so they can have a home for their memories.
Check the batteries in your smoke alarms, and better yet, make sure the alarms haven’t been removed. Install a carbon monoxide monitor and replace your kitchen fire extinguisher if it’s more than 5 years old. Check all flashlights, replace batteries (if needed) and store them throughout the house for safety.
Install electronic locks on frequently used doors to eliminate the need for keys and to be able to change the code when needed.
Get a simple address book to store your user names, passwords and answers to your security questions (write in pencil) or use a password manager app or online resource such as highly-rated Dashlane. It will save you hours in lost productivity. Now go and enjoy your summer and post your thoughts, accomplishments and helpful organizing tips at www.facebook.com/kirnaconsulting.com. If you haven’t “liked” my page on Facebook or connected with me on Linkedin, please do so. I would really appreciate it!