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We treat summer like a break, but the moment school lets out, two things happen at once: routines fall apart, and an entire year’s worth of art and paper comes home to roost. Meanwhile, you’re out the door every single day for the pool, camp, the park, or the ballfield. I love a good reset, but I’m just not interested in spending July buried in dried-out markers and sorting through piles to find hats and glasses. So here are five small, high-impact projects you can knock out one at a time: clear the backlog, set up a few grab-and-go systems, and let the rest of summer run itself.
Tame the Craft-Supply Explosion
Craft supplies multiply when you’re not looking. Half the markers are dead, the glue’s welded shut, and somehow there’s a package containing exactly one googly eye, sparkles, a few feathers and three pipe cleaners in every drawer (and, classically, none of the drawers will close).
This is the moment to dump it all out, sort into keep, toss, and relocate, then give the survivors a home that moves. I love a rolling cart with drawers and a tabletop for this.
If you’re tight on space, these stack-and-lock containers are epic. Replace the dead markers, dried glue, and dull scissors, group the keepers into logical spots.
The end-of-year paper avalanche is real, and it comes with a healthy dose of parent guilt. The trick is to make your kid a partner: ask them “what’s important here?” and let them help you toss what isn’t.
From there, you take over and keep just a few “best of” pieces per kid, filing them in labeled pockets in an accordion folder or in separate folder pouches.
Stick to one set per kid, per year. In ten or twenty years, you hand it over and make it their problem (you’re welcome). If paperless is more your mood, photograph everything, recycle the originals, and drop the images into a digital folder or a printed book. Either way, budget about thirty minutes per kid once you’re in the zone.
You know the cupboard. You open it, and a Stanley takes you out at the knees or nearly breaks a toe. Between the Owallas, the tumblers, the kids’ bottles, and a hundred mismatched lids, summer seems to triple the water bottle chaos. Honestly, the best fix is to reduce the count and ditch the bottles nobody actually drinks from.
If every family member has their non-negotiables and slimming down just isn’t happening, go vertical with a stackable water-bottle organizer so each one gets its own slot and nothing comes tumbling out.
Hats and sunglasses are the things you grab on your way out the door, which is exactly why they’re the first to go missing. Layer in a few family members, and it gets out of hand fast.
Give them a vertical home right by the entry: a hat rack for the caps and a wall-mounted sunglasses holder for the shades. These two solutions can live inside a closet door or bedroom closet, and wow, does it ever make a difference. Everything visible, everything grab-able, and nothing crushed at the bottom of a bin.
This is the one that changes your whole summer. Rather than scrambling to find everything you need for a summer outing when you get the call to hit up a friend’s pool or join a park meet-up, have everything ready to roll.
Think of this summer go-bag like a diaper bag: keep it ready at all times so you can truly grab and go. Park it by the door or in the coat closet, and restock it as soon as you get home so it’s always ready. That’s a two-minute top-up versus the usual frantic hunt for a bag and the mad dash to fill it every time a plan gets hatched. Pack sunscreen, bug spray, fresh swimsuits, a “wet bag” (a plain plastic bag works) for damp suits and towels, a towel per person, hand sanitizer, wipes, a refillable water bottle, a mini first-aid kit, and a few snacks that won’t melt. And now you’re ready for adventure at the drop of a hat (literally).
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