An Organized Command Center

How do you organize your family schedule?

Where do the piles and piles of mail and crafts and recipes and coupons and birthday party invitations go when they come into your house?

In our house, all of the paper comes into the kitchen and I am tasked with organizing it and deciding what stays and what goes.  Unfortunately, I don’t often make those decisions as quickly as I should. Often when I tidy the kitchen after dinner, all of the random paper clutter makes its way to our household “command centre” (yes, I know it sounds strange to call a little piece of countertop and the side of the fridge a command centre, but that’s what all the fancy organizing ladies on the internet call it, and I’m just trying to fit in...).


Source

My ultimate goal is to bring in the mail on my way home in the afternoon, go through the girls' backpacks and update the massive mommy calendar that I have posted on the side of the fridge.  The calendar is marked up with all of the girls’ activities (dance and swimming, play dates, birthday parties), my cake classes, family dinners, work events, etc. 

Unfortunately, between shuttling children to all of these events, activities and classes, half the time the backpacks don’t get emptied until the next morning, and then all of the paper just gets shoved onto the little shelf on the command centre to be dealt with later. 

Last week after I finished the fridge/freezer/pantry organizing, I looked at my sad, messy command centre.  And then I got straight to work.  I took everything off of the shelf, sorted the papers into piles – mail to file, recipes to keep, school art to scrapbook, coupons and trash.  Then I took down the calendar and added the next session of swimming lessons, ballet, Irish dancing and cake classes to the appropriate days, plus birthday party dates/times/places and any other important things that I need to remember.

After getting rid of a truly disgraceful pile of trash/paper clutter, everything that was supposed to stay found a home in its required place.  Aaaahhhh, clean, calm and organized.  For as long as it lasts.....

What did you organize this week?  How do you control the paper monster?