Preparing Your Home for a New Nanny or Family Helper
We are long past the days when every family has a parent staying home full-time, making sure the house is tidy, the meals are nourishing, and every permission slip is signed and delivered on time. A recent study by Pew Research Center revealed that the number of families with one parent staying at home has dropped by half in just the last few decades. More families than ever before are turning to others to help carry the load, whether that’s a full-time nanny, a family assistant, a mother’s helper, or another kind of household support. If you're taking the leap of finding, interviewing, and hiring a new family helper, Hello Nanny! is a great resource for navigating those early steps with confidence. But the work of getting your new hire up to speed doesn’t end after the reference checks and contracts. You also need to prepare the physical environment that your new helper is actually stepping into so that they aren’t guessing where things live and how your household actually runs. That guesswork adds up fast in the first few days, and it's often what makes an otherwise great match feel shakier than it needs to. A little bit of setup on your end and preparing your home for a new nanny can be the difference between a rocky first week and an employee who feels confident and capable from day one! 6 Things to Do to Prepare Your Home Before Your Nanny or Household Employee’s First Day Preparing your home for a new nanny doesn’t mean overhauling your entire space before your employee’s first day. You just need a handful of simple systems in place so they can find what they need and understand how your family operates, without having to interrupt you every few minutes to ask. 1. Build a household command center Pick one central spot, like the side of the fridge or a cabinet in the mudroom, that you can direct household helpers to right away. The idea is to have a single place to put the family calendar, emergency contacts, and any specific details for the day, so it becomes the first place your helper checks when they arrive. Over time, this spot can also hold things like upcoming appointment reminders or a note about a schedule change, which saves you from having to remember to relay every small update in person or by text. 2. Start labeling Sometimes the organizational systems that work well for a family don’t make obvious sense to someone new. Save everyone the guesswork by spending an hour with your trusty labelmaker on the drawers, bins, and cabinets in the kitchen, playroom, and kids’ bathroom. If you don’t have a label maker, painter’s tape and a sharpie will do! Think through the spaces your new employee will actually be using throughout the day: the pantry shelf with kid snacks, the drawer with bibs and burp cloths, the cabinet with the first-aid supplies. It’s a small investment of time, but will pay off constantly in those early weeks when everyone is still learning the rhythm of the house. 3. Document daily routines Take the time to write down the specific routines you use with your kids, even the details that feel almost too obvious to mention. What’s second nature to you after months or years of doing it is brand-new information to someone walking into your home for the first time. Pay special attention to writing down the routines around waking up, falling asleep, and eating meals, since these are often the moments kids feel most sensitive to change. If you use a particular order for the nightly routine, or a certain way of handling mealtime refusals, write it down exactly as you say it. These small, specific details can make a big difference in helping a child feel like the routine hasn’t actually changed, even though the person guiding it has. Once you write this all down, ensure your nanny or household support has a copy too—we suggest printing it out and emailing a copy. 4. Create a household manual When you are staying at a hotel or Airbnb, you are often provided a binder with helpful tips about your stay. We strongly recommend creating something similar for your new babysitter, nanny, or family helper. Include: The daily and weekly schedules for your family Meal preferences, allergies, and feeding instructions Emergency contacts, including next-door neighbors, your pediatrician, poison control, and a nurse line House rules around screen time, snacks, discipline, or other sticking points specific to your family Home logistics like the Wi-Fi password, trash and recycling days, and alarm codes Pet instructions, if applicable The household manual doesn’t need to be fancy. A simple binder or a shared Google doc both work, as long as it’s easy for your helper to find and easy for you to update. 5. Create a communication plan (and stick to it) A household manual covers how things generally work, but day-to-day handoffs need something more immediate. How did nap time go? Did anyone have a rough afternoon? Is there anything you need to know before tomorrow? A shared notes app, a group text thread, or even a simple whiteboard in the command center can carry that ongoing conversation. Some families find it helpful to agree on a short daily rundown covering naps, meals, activities, and mood, so nothing important slips through the cracks on a busy evening. Consistent and transparent communication is key for keeping your household humming along once the initial setup is done. 6. Hold space for your helper As you’re getting ready to welcome your family helper into your home, take a few minutes to think through their needs. Where should they park? Where can they hang their jacket? Is there a dedicated spot in the fridge to tuck their lunch? Thinking this through before they arrive does more than just smooth out logistics. It signals that they belong here, which goes a long way toward helping someone feel comfortable and settled in a brand new environment. Maintaining Systems Once Your Helper is in Place Knowing how to prepare your home for a new nanny day one is a wonderful start, but these systems work best when they keep evolving alongside your family! Revisit the household manual and command center whenever a routine changes, whether that’s a new nap schedule, a new allergy, or a new after-school activity. Pick a regular day and time to check in with your helper to ask what’s working well, what’s still feeling rocky, and what they need to be their best self in the role. Even a short, low-pressure conversation once a month can catch the small frustrations before they turn into bigger ones—for both you AND your helper! It’s also worth remembering that these systems aren’t set in stone. As your kids grow, schedules shift, and your helper settles into the role and develops their own instincts for how things run, your systems should shift right along with them. A manual that gets dusty in a drawer isn’t doing anyone much good, but one that gets updated and referenced regularly becomes a real, living tool for your household. It can be a lifesaver for the other helpers in your life too, whether it’s your mother-in-law in town for the week or a last-minute babysitter you called so that you and your spouse can have a date night! Every family’s needs are different and that’s okay. If you need help thinking through how to better organize your space for the helpers in your life, you know you can call in the Bees!
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This NOT That: Products Our Professional Organizers Love and Loathe
When people are overwhelmed with clutter, they sometimes think that purchasing a set of matching crates or baskets will magically solve their problems. But not every product is worth your hard-earned cash, and not every organizing hack you see on TikTok actually makes sense in the real world. In this blog, we’re bringing you time-tested organizing products and strategies that our Bees across the country stand by—and calling out those things that you should leave behind! But First: PURGE! One of the biggest mistakes people make when they are tackling a home organizing project on their own is to run to the nearest box store and buy a trunkload of organizing products. Oh, honey, don’t do it! It’s a waste of time, money, and energy to buy products before you take the time to purge. We’ve talked you through our Power Purge to help you break through the organizational paralysis that often sets in. When you are organizing any space, whether it’s your bedroom, garage, or back-yard, you absolutely must start with getting rid of the excess. Once you are down to just the items you intend to keep, then it’s time to figure out exactly what kind of storage products will best fit. Purge first, then purchase (or reuse what you already have!). Choose Individuals, NOT Sets Whether we are talking about baskets, containers, organizing trays, or crates, there is virtually no chance that your home’s needs exactly match the items sold as a set. What you end up with is bins or trays that don’t line up with the shape, size, or number of items you own. You also end up with even more clutter—this time in the form of extra containers or trays from the set that you don’t actually need. Instead of buying sets, choose individual pieces that fit the items you are planning to contain. Have we mentioned how important it is to purge and sort before you buy any organizing products? Choose Adjustable Risers, NOT Fixed Risers When our professional home organizers redesign a pantry, we love using shelf risers so that everything is visible—we like to call it stadium seating for cans! Cabinet risers can be wonderful, but not if you get the ones that don’t extend. Make sure you measure your cabinets and find risers that can extend to the entire length. Otherwise you’re just creating a space where things will be harder to find as items fall off the sides. Choose Turntables with Removable Inserts, NOT Fixed Turntables You’ve heard us heap praise on the humble Lazy Susan in the past, but not all turntables are worth their weight. When you are selecting your turntable, make sure that if it is divided into sections, either those dividers are removable/adjustable, or you are SURE that the fixed dividers fit whatever you intend to store in the turntable. Choose Matching Hangers, NOT Cascading Hangers Cascading hangers seem like a great idea. People buy these to save space, but they end up causing trouble because they are bulky and make clothes harder to see. Ultimately, most folks stop bothering to hang items on them at all. Instead of putting money into cascading hangers—or any other kind of gimmicky hanger—put your money into buying matching velvet or acrylic hangers. Not only do they save space, but they transform your closet into your own boutique with minimal cost! Choose Single Hooks, NOT Mounted Hook Panels When you are organizing a space that would benefit from installing hooks, we recommend that you look into purchasing single Command hooks rather than a panel with the hooks already mounted on it. That way, you can choose the numbers, style, and spacing between hooks to better match your individual needs. And best of all—they are removable if you need to edit your decision! Choose Adjustable Drawer Organizers, NOT Rigid Trays Drawers come in all shapes and sizes, and no two homes have the exact same configuration of spatulas, serving spoons, and random kitchen gadgets. When you think of it like that, how would it make any sense to buy a cookie-cutter drawer organizer? There are so many great drawer organizing products and options out there that can expand and be reconfigured based on the dimensions of your drawer and the shape and size of the items you are attempting to fit inside. Did you remember to purge first? No one needs multiple potato mashers, we promise. Choose Bins, NOT Toy Chests Toy chests can be so darling to look at and can really tie a room together. But if you’ve ever actually owned a toy chest, you know they are a black hole for toys. Anything that sinks to the bottom of that pile of plastic is unlikely to see the light of day anytime soon. And if you’ve ever cleaned out a toy chest, you know they are a great place for dust, pet hair, and goldfish crackers to collect. When our professional organizers tackle a playroom or child’s bedroom, we usually use open bins or cubes in a bookcase. You can divide by general categories (LEGO, Hot Wheels, art supplies, etc.) so that items are easy for kids to find but are even easier for kids to put away. We’ve written before about how to help kids develop their own organizational skills and this is a great way to start! Choose Shelves and Dividers, NOT Hanging Closet Organizers We’ve tried using hanging closet organizers and they rarely work for most people’s needs. It’s difficult to see into them, so items regularly get shoved to the back and forgotten. After a few months, they are still hanging out in the closet taking up space, but the owner is just using them to store the stuff they should have purged in the first place. Instead, opt for closet organizing products with a fixed shelf (even a simple bookshelf will do) and with acrylic shelf dividers to keep everything organized, visible, and accessible. Choose Single Hat Hangers, NOT Hat Organizer Sets We love the look of hat organizers, but what are the chances that a panel with a pre-set number of hooks will match the number of hats you have now or next year? Instead of hat racks and hangers, opt for packages of individual hat hooks. You can space them in a way that works for your assortment of hats as well as the wall you are placing them on, plus you can easily expand or contract the collection as needed in the future. Choose Restockable Staples, NOT One-Time Finds We understand the impulse to grab a couple of cute baskets at HomeGoods to help you with an organizing project at home or work. But when the Bees professionally organize a space, we try to think ahead so that the system we are putting in place will be able to adapt to future needs. Part of that is purchasing the best organizing products that we know we will be able to find again in the future if we need to add more or adjust the sizing. We absolutely love the Everything Organizer line of products that can be found at The Container Store (and NO, we aren’t getting any kickbacks for mentioning their products by name!). They come in an extensive range of shapes and sizes, are durable and affordable, and you can clearly see what you have! Choosing the best organizing products is an investment in maintaining the systems that you are putting into place. But for them to be effective, they need to be adjustable and individualized to suit your unique needs. If you feel stuck in any part of the process—from undertaking the Power Purge to selecting the right organizing products, reach out for help. Our Bees are standing by to help you simplify your hive!
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Sunday Reset Tips: As Featured in Hello Nanny
At Bee Organized, we know that creating a well-functioning home often goes beyond organizing. That's why we're proud to partner with Hello Nanny!, a trusted resource for connecting families with exceptional nannies and in-home support. Our partnership is built on a natural connection: organized homes help new caregivers and household professionals settle in faster, and the right support helps families maintain the systems that keep a home running smoothly. Together, we help create the systems that set families, and the people who support them, up for success. Hello Nanny! recently featured insights from Bee Organized Co-Founder Kristen Christian on creating a simple Sunday Reset that helps families start each week feeling prepared instead of overwhelmed. From reducing decision fatigue to creating smoother mornings, these small habits can make a big difference. Read the full article linked here.
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Closet Organization 101: 4 Simple Steps to a Stress-Free Wardrobe
We’ve all experienced that wardrobe paradox when we stare into a completely packed closet, and then realize we have nothing to wear. That subtle wave of anxiety isn’t really about the clothes. It’s about the emotional weight they carry. Because our wardrobe acts as the daily armor that we wear out into the world, our closets can turn into a storage locker for hidden feelings. We hold onto guilt about an expensive price tag that is still hanging on an item, or shame about clothing that no longer fits our current bodies or lifestyles. You deserve a space that reflects who you are right now, not who you were five years ago. When you clear out the clutter, your closet transforms from a source of stress into a curated boutique that inspires confidence and makes picking an outfit stress-free. It’s time to get your wardrobe back in alignment with your fabulous self—and knowing how to organize clothes in a closet is the first step! 1. Get Your Mind and Space Ready Before you pull a single hanger off the rod, you need to prepare your most important tool for this work—your mind! When you’re organizing a clothing closet, the majority of the work you’ll be doing is decision-making. Pick a time when you are feeling fed-up with the clutter and ready to be decisive. Before you begin, you also need to make sure you have the space ready for action. Clear off your bed to use as a staging area and grab some sturdy trash bags for donations. Then, turn on your favorite playlist or podcast and get to work! 2. Edit Your Wardrobe: The Power Purge If you want to clear out your closet like a professional organizer, you’ll need to take EVERYTHING out of your closet. As you move your clothing to the bed, sort each piece into broad categories (jeans, dresses, short-sleeve shirts, etc.). The most important step in a closet cleanout is, without a doubt, the purging! If you reorganize your closet without getting rid of the excess, you are missing the point. You want to clear out the clutter to make space for what matters to you today and in the near future, so that every time you open your closet, you only see those items that fit well, that make you feel confident, and that deserve to take up space. In Bee Organized’s famous Power Purge, we invite you to ask yourself three critical questions about every item in your closet: Does This Item Make Me Happy? You have permission to let go of clothing items that you are holding on to just because you think you should. If an item makes you feel guilt, shame, or frustration, why not get it out of your space? If the clothing item makes you feel happy, confident, comfortable, sexy, polished, or any other feeling that you like to feel, keep it! Is This Item Useful Now or In the Near Future? Just like with the first question, if the answer is YES, keep the item. Easy peasy. But if you haven’t worn an item in years because it’s too itchy, doesn’t fit quite right, is not a good color on you, or is no longer in style, now is the time to let it go. Be honest with yourself. Just because you liked or wore the item during one season of your life doesn’t mean the item should be taking up space today. Is This Item Valuable or Irreplaceable? In some cases, you’ll find items in your closet that don’t make you happy and you aren’t planning to use, but the item is worth a lot of money or is one-of-a-kind. All this means is that you might want to take more care if you decide to part with the item. Perhaps you want to give it to someone who will love or use the item, or perhaps now is the time to finally sell it on Poshmark or ThredUp. Just because something is valuable does not mean you are automatically required to keep it in your closet (or anywhere else in your home)! In addition to purging your clothing, you also need to remove the items that don’t make sense to store in your closet. Can you find another place to keep your wrapping paper, winter boots, or extra bed pillows? 3. Organize Like a Professional After you’ve bagged up and set aside the clothing you are ready to part with—(can you hear us cheering for you?)—you get to think about how to organize your remaining items in a way that makes sense for you, your clothing, and the size and shape of your closet. Here are a few tips: Invest in Matching Hangers We don’t typically advise you to buy a bunch of different organizing projects to tame your clutter. But we do BEElieve in the power of matching hangers to transform your closet! Keep Similar Items Together Think about your closet as your own boutique or mini department store. Keep similar items together and keep those things you use the most in the easiest-to-access spaces. How you categorize your clothing will depend on the unique needs of your climate, occupation, and style, as well as the shape and size of your closet. Once your categories are established (sleeveless, short-sleeved, long-sleeved, sweaters, etc.), try arranging them in rainbow order! It not only looks great, but it also can help prevent you from buying duplicates. Use Vertical Space No matter the size of your closet, think creatively about how you can make vertical space work for you. For your closet reorganization to work well, you need to be able to quickly see what you have that’s clean and ready to wear. Think about using top and bottom shelves, adding hooks, and using the back of the door for extra space. Be Wary of What You Stack Stacking folded clothing on shelves or in drawers is a recipe for toppling towers! Consider rolling clothing, using baskets or bins, or even filing folded clothing items side-by-side vertically like folders in a filing cabinet. Raluca Sharma, owner of Bee Organized Southwest Austin,recommends using shelf dividers to keep clothing stacks in their places. Try the Backwards Hanger Trick When you place everything back into your closet after your purge, put all of the hangers in backward. When you wear something and it comes back through the laundry, hang it up the regular way. At the end of a year, you’ll see which clothes you actually wore and which are just taking up space. Once you’ve got everything put back into place in a way that works well with your current lifestyle, you need to make a proactive plan for maintaining your good work! 4. Maintaining the Hive A beautifully organized closet is a victory, but keeping it that way requires a few simple, sustainable habits. To keep the chaos from creeping back in, you can try a few of our favorite tricks: Reset your closet weekly. Take five or 10 minutes each week to make sure clothes are in their right spots, shoes are put away, the floor is clear, and extra hangers are hanging out together. Keep a donation basket or bag handy. You know the cycle. You pull something out of the closet to wear, try it on, decide it’s wrong for you, and then hang it back up to try again another day. Cristen White (Bee Organized Sioux Falls) recommends keeping a small donation basket in your closet (or hanging a donation bag on a hanger) so that you can quickly remove the item from circulation. Practice the One-In-One-Out rule. This is a great way to stop the tendency to over-accumulate clothing. Anytime you bring a new version of something home, make a pact with yourself to get rid of an old one. For example, if you bring home a lovely new sweater, it’s time to say goodbye to one that you rarely wear. Purge every time the season changes. Amber Lawson (Bee Organized Central Austin) recommends purging clothing between seasons. You can remove those clothing items that you never wore during the season that has just passed AND make space for a purchase or two for the upcoming season. Closet organization is about creating a functional space that supports your daily life, not creating a picture-perfect wardrobe. You deserve to be able to open that closet door and quickly see an array of clothing that fits you well and that makes you feel good about whatever you are facing today. If you need help with learning how to organize clothes in a closet, reach out to the Bee Organized location that’s nearest to you. Our Bees are always ready to give you the compassionate, confidential, and judgment-free help you deserve!
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21 Break Rooms and Zero Chaos: How the Bees Helped Lockton Companies Get Organized
When you walk into the bustling Kansas City headquarters of Lockton Companies—the world’s largest independent insurance broker—you expect to see people focused on high-level strategy and client care. What you don’t expect to find is decades of mystery tupperwares, forgotten lunchboxes, and “I Love My Labradoodle” coffee mugs wedged behind cabinet doors on every floor of the building. When TJ Wright stepped into the role of hospitality manager at Lockton Companies, he immediately noticed the break room clutter. “Every cabinet was packed full of stuff. I noticed it with the first cabinet I opened,” he commented. With 1,400 busy people in the building, Lockton had accumulated a LOT of stuff across their 21 break rooms and four major storage areas since moving into the space in 2004. TJ wanted every break room to be a clean, modern, and functional space so that employees could focus on their work, not waste time searching for the right condiment, snack, or a spoon. He wanted the cafeteria to be easy to navigate without any sticking points. And he wanted the four big storage areas to have a thorough purge and organizational system put into place. The negative effects of cluttered work spaces are well-documented, so it was an easy call for TJ to make. BRING IN THE BEES! The Execution The Bee Organized team swooped in with their signature calm, orderly magic. They didn’t just organize; they tackled the massive logistical challenge of sorting through the clutter of an entire office building floor by floor. But what do you do with the hundreds and hundreds of items cleared out of the cabinets? You get a little creative! TJ and his team filled long tables and shelves with lost and forgotten items and hosted a sort of garage sale. Employees used the honor system to buy unclaimed items and ended up raising $500 for an internal corporate charity! The remaining items were packaged up and donated to a local shelter. Beyond just clearing out the clutter, the Bees used in the kind of professional business organizing insight that changes how a workspace functions. They measured all of the spaces and brought in clear storage bins, drawer dividers, condiment caddies, and other matching organizers—designing each space to intuitively match the needs of employees. The transformation extended beyond the 21 break rooms to the massive central cafeteria, creating a seamless and stress-free flow for the 1,000+ employees who eat lunch there regularly. One Year Later: The Hive is Still Humming A full year after the project, Lockton hasn’t had to change a single system that the Bees put in place. The spaces are still beautifully organized and easy to maintain for his team, and the daily friction of a messy break room is gone! When we asked TJ what he would say to other businesses wondering if they should hire Bee Organized, he said “Seriously, it was the best money spent. They are super knowledgeable and so good at what they do. I could have done it myself, but it would have taken me two years. The Bees did it in less than a week!” A peaceful workplace is one of the best employee benefits you can offer. If you need help whipping an office (or a whole office building!) into shape, you know you can call in the Bees!
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Tips for How to Stay Organized While Traveling BEEfore, During, AND After!
We know the internet is filled to the brim with travel advice, but the Bee Organized team is especially suited to help you get and stay organized for the duration of your upcoming trip! We’ve seen how the best travel organization plans crumble on the second day of the vacation—and how trip-related clutter can linger in the corners of bedrooms for WEEKS after the return. So let us help! We’ve divided our best travel organization advice into four sections to help you think through what will work best for your family regardless of whether you are flying across the pond or road-tripping through the Midwest. 1. Pack Like a Professional Organizer The goal of packing during the travel organizing process isn’t just to fit everything in your suitcase; it’s to make sure you can actually find what you need when you need it. Invest in Packing Cubes Sets of packing cubes, such as thinner nylon versions, are less than $20, hold up well under travel stress, and serve as mobile drawers to keep you organized along the way. Buy a different colored set for each family member to keep things even simpler! Stick to a Coordinated Color Palette Consider sticking to a specific color palette for your trip so that all of your clothing coordinates. If you’ve ever wanted to experiment with a capsule wardrobe, a long trip is a great place to try it out! Give Everything a Home Like you’ve heard us say a hundred times by now, everything needs a home! Use zippered mesh bags to keep similar items together, bag your shoes to keep street grime off your clothes, and scan a digital version of your travel documents into an album on your phone. Keep a Running Master Packing List Keep a running packing list on your phone or computer so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time you are packing for a trip. Regularly add to the list when you discover things that you wish you had brought so that you have them next time. Make Sure Everything Is Full and Charged Make sure everything is full. Have you charged your backup battery packs, phones, Kindles, tablets, laptops, and headphones? Have you filled up your travel shampoo and conditioner? Is your travel first aid kit stocked with what your crew tends to need the most? 2. Reset Your Home Before You Leave Organizing for a trip isn’t just about what leaves the house! It’s about doing what you can to prepare your house for the future influx of exhausted humans loaded with dirty clothes and good memories. Think about doing a complete reset of your home before you go so that you can hit the ground running when you return. Focus on tidying areas you’ll see first when you walk back through the door after your trip. Clear your entryway or kitchen counters so you have a place to set down all the things you’ll be carrying when you return. Clean the kitchen, remove items that will spoil from the fridge, and rinse out the sink and the coffee maker. Be sure to take out the trash and recycling. If there’s anything left in your budget, schedule a cleaning service to come while you are away so that you come home to a sparkling home. Try to catch up on your household laundry before you head out of town so that you can tackle the dirty clothes from your suitcase right when you get back. 3. Stay Organized While on Your Trip Keeping the chaos in check comes down to thoughtfully setting yourself up for success and then maintaining a few tiny habits while you are traveling. Live Out of Your Packing Cubes Don’t feel the need to completely unpack. You can move your packing cubes straight into drawers or on shelves to keep everything accessible and organized. Use the “Safe Shoe” Trick One important travel organizing tip is keeping your belongings safe. If you put anything of value in the hotel safe, put a single shoe inside the safe with your stuff. You will wander around looking for your missing shoe until you have that "aha!" moment, but you’ll never leave your passport or jewelry behind! Designate a Travel Drop-Tray Bring a travel tray (or even just a brightly colored paper plate) that screams “Put important stuff here!” It works as a magnet to attract cell phones, key cards, loose change, and other things you don’t have a place for when traveling. Streamline Your Toiletries One area that tends to get chaotic quickly is the toiletry bag. Hanging toiletry bags work great for staying organized while also keeping counter space clear. If you are traveling with the whole family, try using one large bag for shared items and smaller pouches for each person’s individual items like toothbrushes and makeup. Commit to a 5-Minute Nightly Reset Taking even just five minutes each night to reset your room will help you keep the clutter from taking over. Throw away trash, restock your day bag, and recharge electronics. Decide which clothing items are irredeemably dirty and go into the dirty clothes bag and which items can return to their packing cubes for another day. Maximize the Travel Home If you have a flight or long drive home, use the time to help you transition back to real life: write a post-trip To-Do list, sort your vacation photos and delete the blurry shots and duplicates, or set up a grocery delivery. 4. Stick the Landing Once You’re Home Travel organization isn’t really over until everything is put away and the house is back in order. Keep these organizing tips in mind: Take everything out of the suitcases immediately and put the luggage away. There’s no reason to let the partially unpacked suitcase take up space in your closet for the next couple of weeks! Sort your laundry. Everything that’s still clean in their packing cubes can go back in drawers or closets. Get that first load of dirty clothes started while you deal with the rest of the unpacking. Keep a dedicated crate for your travel-only supplies like packing cubes, electrical adaptors for traveling internationally, pouches for travel documents, and neck pillows. Have a simple homecoming meal plan ready. Whether it’s a pre-scheduled DoorDash delivery or a lasagna you stashed in the freezer, your future self will be grateful that they don’t have to think about dinner. Put all papers together (receipts, brochures, the stack of mail waiting for you) to sort through when you have the time. Your top priority when you first get home is to undo your packing. You can sort through miscellaneous papers once you’ve had a good night’s sleep in your own bed! Whether you are heading out on a grand adventure or a quick weekend getaway, remember that organization isn’t about rigid perfection—it’s about creating more space for the memories that matter. Travel is meant to be a reset, not a source of additional stress. If the thought of prepping for your next trip (or digging out from the last one) feels overwhelming, the Bees are always here to help with our best vacation organizing tips!
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How to Teach Kids to Bee Organized: 4 Little Habits with a Big Impact
Organization is not a personality trait that kids are born with. It’s a skill! And like any skill, it can be taught, practiced, and improved over time. The goal is not to raise mini-perfectionists who keep their socks color-coded. It’s to raise capable humans who know how to manage their belongings and their time in a way that works for them. We regularly get asked how to help kids get (and stay!) organized, so we’ve rounded up our best ideas for developing life-long organizational skills in children of all ages. 1. Start with Systems Kids Can Actually Use If the system you are developing for teaching your kids to organize only works when YOU are involved, it’s not a system that your kids can maintain. We suggest involving kids in creating the organizing systems in the first place. Let them help choose bins, decide where things should live, and make the labels. The more ownership they have, the more likely they are to follow through. If you want kids to be able to put things “away” by themselves, everything needs to have an “away.” Every single item (or category of items) needs a home. And we cannot overstate how important it is to label your storage system in a way that makes sense for your age of kids. For example, labels for the youngest kids should use pictures in addition to words so that everyone can easily figure out what goes where. Make sure the system you design is simple and accessible. Kids need to be able to reach and maneuver bins by themselves. For younger children, use open bins that they can toss toys into without needing to fuss with hard-to-manage lids. Place hooks down low enough for kids to hang up their own jackets, backpacks, robes, and bath towels. And remember—, an organizing system that actually works for your kids might not be perfect or beautiful, and that’s okay. 2. Teach the Process Telling a kid to “clean your room” is a bit like telling someone to “get organized.” It can be absolutely overwhelming unless they have the ability to break big jobs down into manageable tasks. Help kids look at a larger project and think through all the steps along the way. For example, for tidying a room, we love the Five Things method. Encourage your kids to: Collect all trash/recycling from the room Take away all dirty dishes Pick up all laundry Put away things that have a home Deal with the stuff that doesn’t have a home Developing and teaching your kids organizing processes for cleaning out their backpacks, organizing their desk, or preparing their lunch box can help them build their self-sufficiency skills. 3. Make Routines Work for You One of the best ways for how to get kids to organize is to help them establish and maintain consistent routines. Children absolutely thrive with clear routines, as routines help kids feel safe, build independence, and reduce power struggles. Setting up clear morning and evening routines can be so empowering for kids. Establishing norms that everyone in the family follows can help tame the chaos too. For example: We always put away one activity before we start the next. We always pack lunches and backpacks the night before. We spend 5 minutes resetting our bedroom each night. Our whole family takes part in a Weekly Reset every Sunday. We find checklists to be so useful when helping kids think through routines. Work with your kid to write a checklist for dailiy/weekly chores, their bedtime routine, packing their lunch or backpack, or any other predictable event. You can also establish routines that help kids understand and manage their time. Tracking deadlines, assignments, practices or rehearsals, competitions, and more is such an important skill to master! Depending on their age, a dry-erase weekly or monthly calendar on their wall, a spiral-bound day planner, or Google calendar on their phone can all work well. The ability to project themselves into their future is an incredible life skill that will benefit them their whole lives. For example, realizing that a Thursday evening event means they’d better start their Friday assignment early can prevent buckets of stress. Some of us grown-ups are still learning to care for our future selves, but the next generation can do better in implementing strategies for organizing their time and task list! 4. Coach, Don’t Control! This might be our hardest piece of advice. If you value having an organized home, it’s very tempting to step in, take over, and just do it yourself. It’s certainly faster and easier, but it’s not helping in the long run! Your role is not to be the manager of everyone else’s stuff. It’s to be a coach and a cheerleader. That might look like asking your middle schooler what they need for practice, rather than telling them what they need to bring. It might look like allowing mistakes to happen, because that’s how we learn. We need to let go of the idea that perfection is the only thing worth celebrating and that every kid’s space has to be organized the same way. Part of this process is regularly clearing out the clutter together since kids outgrow clothes, toys, and interests very quickly. Normalizing the process of saying goodbye to things that no longer serve you can help prevent kid clutter from building up. Teaching kids to be organized isn’t just about having a less cluttered house … although that is a pretty great benefit! Helping your kids develop organizational skills will help reduce stress and last-minute scrambles, build independence and confidence, and create more time and space for the activities you love to do together. If your home is feeling a little too chaotic right now, you don’t have to figure it all out on your own. As professional home organizers, the Bees are always here to help create systems that work for your whole family, including your kiddos!
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Sentimental Decluttering: Keepsakes and Trophies and Art … Oh My!
Every May, households across the country are inundated with stacks of worksheets, dioramas, self-portraits, participation certificates, and a million other items that kids of all ages produce throughout their school year. If you find it overwhelming, you are in good company! This is the season of milestones, and every milestone (even just moving from second to third grade) comes with the pressure to save everything. We feel this deep, internal need to document every spark of genius or athletic prowess, often because we’re afraid that if we toss the paper, we’re tossing the memory. Let us remind you that memories live in your heart and mind, not in a box! Keepsakes are a wonderful way to reconnect with those memories—but only if you are keeping what matters instead of everything you’ve ever smiled at. Why Keepsakes Are a Family Sticking Point Why is it so hard to throw away a pinch-pot that your kid doesn’t remember making and doesn’t want to keep? And why does there seem to be a force field around the recycle bin when you try to toss a stack of scribbles from when your youngest was learning to hold a marker? In most cases, one or more emotions stand in the way. It’s normal to feel nostalgic when you see items from your children’s early years … and it can also be normal to have that wistful sense of missing the younger and snugglier versions of your beloved humans. Some of the clients we work with even talk about a feeling of grief or loss when sorting through items from their kids’ childhood. In other cases, we keep things because we want to “legitimize” our kids’ hard work (or the fact that we were fascinating humans before we became parents!). We imagine a future biographer or grandchild marveling over a program listing a choir solo in 6th grade. These complicated feelings are part of why we end up just keeping everything. We aren’t sure what will matter to our kids (or ourselves) after years or decades pass. The problem is that when you keep everything, it stops being treasure and becomes meaningless. It’s just one more crate to haul around and take up space. Reframing Your Thinking: The Who and Why Test for Organizing Sentimental Items Before you add another stack of graded spelling tests into a crate, asking yourself a couple of key questions can help you gain some clarity. First, ask yourself who you are keeping the item for. If that crayon family portrait makes your heart swell every time you see it, it’s a parent keepsake. Save it with your treasures. If it’s a varsity letter, diploma, or something that you imagine will travel with your child into their future, save it with their treasures. The second question to ask yourself is why you are keeping the item. We often see our clients keep an item only because of its age or they remember where they got it, not because it’s meaningful or valuable. Keeping a stuffed animal from your childhood even though you never liked it is not a good use of your space! Practical Strategies for Decluttering Sentimental Items at Every Age As our kids grow, the nature of what they bring home evolves from messy finger paintings to stackable academic achievements, and our systems need to grow right along with them. The Early Years: The Art Avalanche Toddlers and preschoolers are prolific artists. If you kept every “About Me” board, macaroni necklace, and crayon doodle, you’d need a warehouse! Here are a few keepsake decluttering tips for reducing the chaos at this stage: Create a holding tank for keepsakes (such as a pretty basket or crate under the bed) to delay your decision-making. You don’t need to decide the fate of a painting the moment it is handed to you. It’s okay to wait a few weeks or months until the initial excitement fades, and then you can more objectively decide whether to keep it or toss it. For 3D projects like cardboard castles and mobiles made of recycled items, snap a photo of your kid holding their creation. That photo will help you capture the creativity without collecting the dust. Use your refrigerator as a temporary gallery and follow the one-in, one-out rule. Every time a new piece of art comes home, it replaces the old one. The retired piece can be recycled, dropped in your holding tank for a later decision, or tucked into an envelope to be mailed to a lucky grandparent! The Elementary Years: The Achievement Era This is the age of participation certificates, spelling bees, and “Student of the Month” ribbons. Here are a couple of keepsake decluttering strategies to get you through it: Give each kid a sturdy crate for their elementary archive. By limiting the physical space from the start, you are naturally helping your kid keep their favorite things from each grade level, rather than everything they bring home. Some of our Bees swear by using one folder per grade level to keep it even simpler! At the end of every school year, look through the crate with your child, adding the most important pieces from this year and weeding out a few things from prior years that no longer feel relevant. This is not only a fun time to reminisce together, but also helps teach the valuable life skill of curating what you keep. The Teenage Years: High School and Graduation Between band programs, softball rosters, and prom tickets, the paper trail becomes a mountain! We have a couple of things to try: Milestone events like graduation creates a massive influx of cards, Class of 2026 decorations, and other related items all at once. Put everything in a graduation holding box for a couple of months, and then once the emotional high of the ceremony has settled, you and your new grad will be in a better position to decide what’s worth long-term storage. As they approach adulthood, start helping your kid move official documents like a diploma, social security card, or passport into a fireproof and waterproof safe. These are the documents that they will need for the rest of their lives! Twenty-Somethings and Beyond: The Hand-Off Whether they go to college, start their professional lives, or move into their first apartment, there comes a time when the collections need to face their owner: Once your child has settled into their own home, it’s time for the great hand-off! Bring out those bins and help them decide what they actually want to move with them into the next chapter of their lives. Encourage them to photograph and digitize papers and other items that they want a record of without using space for the physical item. A cloud-based folder for “grade school memorabilia” is much easier to move from apartment to apartment than five heavy-duty crates of old notebooks and trophies. The secret to preventing a keepsake pile-up is regular organizing and editing. Just because something goes into the keepsake box doesn’t mean it has a lifetime lease! Make sure you check your bins periodically, because as your kids grow, you’ll find it easier to let go of the “good” to make room for the “great.” If you’re staring at a mountain of school year leftovers and feeling overwhelmed, don’t forget that you can give the Bees a buzz! We can help you sort through the sentimental layers, design a sustainable system for everyone’s keepsakes, and clear out the clutter so that you can focus on making new memories.
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