Here are our best tips for keeping organized and ensuring smoother stress-free mornings, whether you pack a gang of kids off to school or want to make life easier before you head off on your work commute. With most of these tips, you can use what you already have at home, employ a little DIY or search your local Used.ca site for some great deals.

Backback station

If you have the space, assign each child a backpack station. It’s where they store their coats, shoes, backpacks and homework materials as they come through the door, so that their belongings are neat, as well as easily accessible the following morning. Use a little homemade milk or chalk paint if you like a pop of colour.

Crates are great for all kinds of storage and preventing clutter. Clutter can be stressful! If you have the space in your hallway, they can be used as shoe racks as well as benches for little bodies to put on and take off footwear. Look for crates in the household category of our site, as well as in antiques, where you will often find quirky old fruit and pop bottle crates. Source wire organizers (see image) and attach to crates for returning forms and other important papers.

Lunch prep

There are so many things you can do to speed up the lunch making process, whether you prep for one person or for five:

• Apple corer – spare the landfill unnecessary aluminium from the landfill and forget the lemon juice. Instead use an apple corer to slice your apple and wrap with an elastic band
• Pancake flipper – scoop those sandwiches up and into their bags
• Help yourself snack station – use a shoe organizer to store snacks and pre-prepped veggies. Colour code so that your kids get a good balance of nutritious and fun snacks. We use a coloured clip to alert us to peanut filled snacks that can’t go into school
• Portable drawers – source in the household category of your local site and keep all tupperware, lids, water bottles, snack packs and lunchboxes in their own set of drawers. We love easy to find wicker drawers, but you can use anything that suits your decor and pocket

Shoe organizers

These are the epicentre of organization! They have so many uses and are easily found gently used in our household > accessories category:

• Help yourself snack station – (see above)
• Homework stations – use a small shoe organizer and hang on the back of the chair your child uses for homework. No scrambling around for marker pens anymore!
• Mitts and hats – in colder months use a shoe organizer to store winter woollens
• Seasonal extras – chapstick, chewing gum, extra hair accessories, sunscreen, keep them all in a shoe organizer and never rummage through bathroom cupboards again!

Chalkboards / checklist

We can’t resist chalkboard paint, especially now that it comes in an assortment of colours. Use a spare wall in the kitchen or hallway, paint the side of your fridge or source some old picture frames from our household > accessories category, there are lots of ways to accommodate a checklist.

For the ultimate DIY, you can even make your own chalkboard paint!

Another option is to source an old window frame and use a dry erase marker for your lists. Very old and antique frames are becoming more and more popular so might be hard to find, but the individual panes of glass are perfect for family to-do lists. We suggest our following categories to find surplus windows: household > accessories, building-supplies and antiques.

We hope these tips streamline your day-to-day tasks. Share your favourite advice for keeping your everyday projects stress-free and we will give you a free AdBooster. Just leave us a comment below.