Keep your kids organized by colour coding

Keep the whole family organized during the school year and beyond by using simple colour coding. Based on quick visual recognition cues that we learned as children, colour coding can help keep life, and everything that comes with it, organized and accessible.

When heading back-to-school, families can simplify their day-to-day happenings with items that can easily be colour-coded, such as folders, notebooks and expanding files. Take advantage of the back-to-school deals and stock up on supplies that get the entire family on the same page.

The experts at Hilroy offer up these tips and tricks to help any household get started with colour-coding:

• Choose one key colour for each family member.  Decide that colour before shopping and coordinate backpacks, lunch bags, pencil cases and binders to keep your home organized.  Can’t decide on one colour? Some products allow creative colour-coding with patterns and styles that are meant to be mixed and matched.
• Use each family member’s colour to update your calendar and dry erase boards. This simple task will help you compare and coordinate schedules with the change of a marker.
• Assign one colour to each subject. For students who switch subjects during the day, organizing homework, textbooks and notes can be overwhelming. Coordinate notebooks, files, binders and even writing utensils to make sure everything needed for each class is easy to sort after class. 
• Use bins, expanding files and binder dividers with “reminder” flags to keep track of priorities. Schools often send home an overwhelming amount of handouts, reminders, permission slips and medical forms – especially when kids head back to school. Parents and children can both benefit from a paper management system. 
• Sort kitchen items like spices, cutting boards and recipes by colour.  Use a file folder or binder to keep menus, shopping lists, recipes and coupons at hand for easy access. 
• Use expanding files when you’re creating multiple colour-coding systems. They’re perfect for sorting and storing bills, mail, homework, notes or quizzes, find an expanding file that comes with different coloured folders. Sort the folders by priority, date or type of project. As projects change, so can the order of the folders.