How Can My Family Stay Organized With A 5 Year Old In Kindergarten?

I use a planner(see source) and a large 3 ring binder. This is a great system. The planner keeps track of events. I have many pockets with labels in the binder. Everything gets its own pocket. School. Art stuff to keep. Extra-curricular activities. Events we want to go to. Every day, just go through the backpack and put it where it belongs.
I think you want to save some things, but if you are going to let something go, just take a picture of it. No big deal. You will have it in its perfect form(not tattered and yellowing) forever! At the end of the year, you can go through the binder and create a memory book.
Try and “purge” something out of it every day. That will keep you in a “purging” mindset!
Check out my parenting and organizational articles for more ideas!

I always found it hard to decide which papers and artwork to save and which ones to throw out. If you start a system at the beginning of her school years, you can have a wonderful gift of memories to give her when she leaves home. After the paper or piece of artwork has been displayed for a few days, put her name, age, date, and a brief description of the artwork on the back. Put the paper in a shirt box, or in portfolio if it is too large. At the end of the month, go through the papers and keep the ones you really want to save. Transfer these to an under the bed type of box labeled with the child’s name and year. At the beginning of a new school year, start a new box. It’s a great way to keep all your memories labeled and organized and stored.
I got this idea and lots of others from a little booklet written by a professional organizer. She gives loads of tips on how to organize your children without going crazy! Her website has good information that I have found to be very useful in my own family.

Clean out her backpack every night. Get a bulletin board to post her permission slip and special supplies papers. Your parents should be signing permission slips immediately then safety pin to the outside of her backpack to get turned into the teacher the next day. If there’s an event coming up that your family is interested in, mark it on a shared family calendar and recycle the paper.

Go through her bag each night and sign and send back immediately what needs to go back to school. Tell your daughter to be sure to give it to the teacher the next morning.
As far as papers go, I just keep them in a stack in case I need to refer back to them.
I have a calendar hanging in the kitchen. When I get a note home about an early out, a field trip or a special activity at the school, I write it on the calendar immediately. I go online to the school calendar and print out a listing of the early outs/holidays and put those on the calendar in advance.

This should help! When my kids were kindergarten, when they came home the first thing they did(after taking off their coats& hanging them up), they were to take their book bags to the kitchen table, open them up and pull out their papers for that day, on the wall (was a shelf-like drawer), on the wall, with their names on it,they were to put their papers in the (drawer shelf-like),[like you see in offices but on the wall instead – it was deep(no papers could fall out),my children knew which one was theirs, by color, and that was where they were to put their papers from their teacher! We never lost anymore papers!Try it!!Good Luck!!Merry Christmas!Let them design their box on the wall!(DRAWER)?

We have a board that we put up on the wall. We thumb tack all the important papers that we need to keep until they are irrelevant. The homework that she has to do throughout the week we put up on the fridge. I also have a date book and as soon as the papers come home I right down any important dates we need to remember. Good luck!

Get a flexifile (very cheap at the dollar store) and keep track of the papers that way. Ask her every day when she gets home from school what papers she brought, find out what day they are due, and put them in that day in your folder. Go through them with her every night.
Get a calendar for the fridge and put it to use… write down important dates (teacher’s meetings, etc)

Get some folders. Put things that need to be signed in one, things that return to school in another, things that stay home in the next, and then sort out the stay home pile and throw away what you don’t want. Also get a planner to keep track of dates and times.

You could either get a desk with drawers and make files for the different things or buy a filing cabinet and make files for them.
A desk might be better because then she can use it as she gets older and you can put pens and paper and other things in there as well as files.