Five on Friday: Very Smart Things to Do (School Year Edition)

There are lots of things I know I should be doing year-round to make my own life easier. Some of them I do without even thinking about it (like putting my cloth shopping bags right back in the car after I unload the groceries) and some I fail to do resulting in driving my husband crazy. (For example: He cannot fathom WHY my car keys would EVER be anywhere else besides the ignition or the designated hook. My defense is that since women's clothes are woefully short on pockets and I am frequently carrying 547 things out of the car, I need to throw them into the deep, dark depths of my purse.)

But I digress.

There are a few very smart things that are specific to the school-year that would really make my life much easier and I religiously adhere to them with varying consistency. They are:

1. Pack lunches in the evenings. In the past six weeks of school, I believe we have done this approximately three times. And each time we did it was very, very smart of us.

2.  Make the kids pack their own lunches. I almost never do this. I know, I know, I am not doing myself or them any favors by continuing to baby them this way, particularly the teenagers. But I can come up with a list of reasons justifying why I continue to do so (watch out for this on a future Five on Friday list!)

3. Keeping a box of random presents in the closet for all of the parties the kids get invited to. Many of the invites have been sort of last-minute lately so this has worked out really well for me. So well, in fact, I need to scan some clearance racks and refill it soon.

4. Take care of the mountains of papers they bring home each day on that very same day. I have to do this or we would be buried. And I have been doing this every single day and yet still somehow had no idea it was crazy hair day on Tuesday. 

5. Save empty shoe boxes. You know there's going to come a day when one of the kids needs one for a project the very next day. Maybe you'll even have two and can save the day for another family who did not follow this handy guideline but probably makes their kids pack their own lunches every evening.