30 Fantastic Ways to Organize the House Before Back to School

Nick GerhardtUpdated: Apr. 18, 2022

Put a plan in place (before the chaos of back to school begins) with these smart ideas and products for your home.

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How to Be Organized for School: Use an Over-the-Door Shoe Organizer

Don't just fill these holders with shoes. Fill over-the-door organizers with school supplies, which you can easily hang over a bedroom, office or play room door. Pick up a shoe organizer now on Amazon.

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PeopleImages/Getty Images

Put Up a Mail Organizer

A mail organizer is a smart addition for the back of the door or wall space next to a desk. Use it to sort papers, store textbooks, and organizer your school supplies. You can also build your own!

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Courtesy of Teaching Mama

Fill Glass Jars

Smaller craft and school supplies might seem difficult to organize, but not if you use glass jars. Buy new glass jars at the grocery store, or wash and reuse pickle, olive, jam or jelly jars. See how a Mason jar can do some heavy lifting around the house.

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Photo: Regina Easter

How to be Organized for School: Use a Tiered Cake Stand for School Supplies

Create your own decorative craft caddy by stacking cake stands together on a lazy Susan. Once filled with school supplies, you can place this caddy in the middle of a table so that multiple children can access what they need.

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Courtesy of Mad in Crafts

Create a Craft Peg Board

Hang up a peg board to organize your school supplies and make them quick and easy to grab on the go. And to help you keep everything in order, try painting sections of the peg board using different colors of acrylic paint for specific supplies.

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Courtesy of The Crafty Pickle

Make a K-Cup Caddy

Fill a K-cup holder with disposable condiment cups. As a result, you've created an inexpensive way to hold tiny school supplies, like glitter, beads or sequins. Best of all, you can easily find the materials you need to make this K-cup caddy at any supermarket or discount store.

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Courtesy of Laura Silva

File Your Fabrics

Keep your fabrics organized by using a filing cabinet. Simply wrap fabric around the filing cabinet folders, hang them and voila! This professional-looking holder helps you find the fabric you need without a lot of mess or hassle. You'll need this school supplies organization hack when your little one is in need of a homemade costume.

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Courtesy of Jaime Costiglio

How to be Organized for School: Serve Up School Supplies in a Silverware Tray

Move over flatware, because the school supplies are taking over! Reuse any silverware tray as a craft and school supply organizer that easily fits into a drawer or cabinet. Learn how to organize your room in an hour.

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Courtesy of Christina Hibbs

Hang Galvanized Pails

Fill small pails with school supplies. And then hang them on wall hooks, a coat rack, on string, a peg board or cabinet knobs. Paint them with acrylic paint to make them more colorful, or leave the pails unpainted for a more rustic look.

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Courtesy of WaiSam

How to be Organized for School: Utilize a Kitchen Cart

Wheel your school supplies wherever you need them by organizing them in a kitchen cart. And with multiple levels, you can sort your supplies by type, by class or by color for easy access.

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Photo: Serena Appiah

Knife Block Crayon Holder

Transform an old knife block into a cute crayon holder by drilling holes into the knife slots. You can also attach a few brackets on the sides to hold scissors, glue sticks or pencils.

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Family Handyman

Stack Bins the Easy Way

Plastic storage bins are one of the great garage storage systems to separate and organize your equipment by sport or season. Unfortunately, they usually get stacked against a wall somewhere, which makes getting to the bottom bins difficult, especially for your household's littlest teammates. Luckily, a permanent DIY garage solution is only a weekend away with our easy-to-build storage towers that are an attractive and ingenious way to provide easy access to your bins. Consider different color bins for each sport to make finding what you need a breeze, and utilize the sides of the wooden frame for wall-mounted accessory items such as fishing rod holders or utility hooks for lightweight equipment.

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Family Handyman

Organize Before Back to School: Create a Command Center

Create a command center or message center for your family. This is a good place to keep mail and bills you can’t tend to right away, store grocery lists and leave important notes. Add a calendar everyone can use and you’ll never miss an appointment or a child’s sports practice again. Get organized by building this handy message center.

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Mudroom Doorway Drop-Off

The garage entry is a hot spot in Toni Hammersley’s home. So the brain behind abowlfulloflemons.net turned that space into an organization station. “The hooks are great for jackets and scarves, the basket for shoes, and the wall organizer for umbrellas,” she says. “When planning, I made a list of what needed to be organized and went with it.” The simple setup even keeps her kids in check. “The less our kids have to think about organizing, the more they are likely to do it.”

Mudroom Bright Ideas

Hanging baskets for umbrellas and re-useable bags at an eye-level spot ensure that you never be without on a rainy day or grocery day.
Plenty of coat hooks allow for everyone to have a spot to hang their seasonal clothing items.
A large basket for shoes establishes a no-tripping zone in the mudroom and keeps the clutter at bay.

This story originally appeared in Country Woman Magazine.

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Courtesy of Make Something Mondays

Six-Pack Carrier

Take that six-pack beverage carrier and turn it into a desktop organizer. You’ll need some duct tape, Mod Podge, a sponge brush and scrapbook paper to decorate. Use it to store pencils, pens, Crayons and markers. A six-pack carrier is also great for the fridge.

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Photo: Courtesy of diy inspired

Spice Containers

Next time you empty a store-bought spice container, rinse it out and use it to store small items. Try storing craft supplies such as beads, pins and buttons.

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Family Handyman

Mud Room Grab And Go Bags

In your entryway, keep a tote bag for each activity you or your kids regularly participate in. For instance, have one bag for soccer practice and one for band rehearsals. That way you can simply grab the bag and go, with all the essentials inside. Depending on your needs, three other grab-and-go totes you might consider keeping are:

A car travel/restaurant tote filled with travel-friendly toys, quiet games or projects the kids can do while waiting for dinner in a restaurant;
Dry-cleaning tote for clothes that need to be taken to the cleaners;
Library tote for your books and library card.

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Family Handyman

Shoe Solution

We have a strict policy at our house about removing your shoes before entering the house. (It works most of the time.) Once we implemented the rule, the next problem was the clutter of shoes blocking the door. While I was looking at the coat rack in the entry, it dawned on me that I could do the same for shoes, so I built another one and hung it close to the floor. — Jimmy Keen. Get your mudroom organized with these 15 simple solutions.

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Alexilena/Shutterstock

Divide and Conquer

If there’s one thing a teen bedroom needs, it’s space to hang out. Simple shelves divide this room into sleeping and living space while maintaining a light and airy look. These 12 fresh ideas won’t have your teen complaining about a boring room.

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Via Ideal Home

Learn in Style

There will be less complaining about homework with an organized home office space for your teen. The dark wall color draws you in and the white wall decor, chair and desk, along with some well-placed pops of color, make this the perfect environment for studying.

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Photo: Courtesy of Brenda Porter-Rockwell

Swing From the Rafters With Mesh Storage

A hanging mesh storage hammock creates a cradle for lightweight toys like balls or plush toys. Or, use a cloth hammock or colorful sheet to create the same effect. A yard or two of tulle fabric works great and has a fairyland look. And when you're done with your kid's room, it's likely time to apply some handy storage ideas to your garage.

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Family Handyman

Magnetic Office Supplies Holder

Organize your small office supplies in this great-looking holder. Here's a perfect way to organize all those paper clips, rubber bands and pushpins. All it takes is a magnetic knife/tool holder strip, small jars with lids and a few fender washers. Check out the complete plans for a magnetic office supplies holder.

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Family Handyman

Turn-of-the-century office supply holder

It's easy to find stuff stored in jars. Screw hose clamps to a board and mount it on the wall in your home office. Secure mason jars in the hose clamps to create clever storage for office supplies such as stamps, paper clips and string. The clear jars let you immediately see where everything is. This is also a great idea for bathrooms and workshops.

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Heart Work Organizing

Stairwell Storage

Think of your stairwell as an extension of your basement. If there’s room, add a couple of floating shelves and hooks for a little extra storage.

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Amazon

Chore Chart

A chore chart can become a good visual way to get kids to do their chores. They’ll be some satisfaction when they get to move the task to the completed column. Check out 12 other painless ways to get kids to do chores.

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Amazon

Homework Organizer

Stop scrambling for a homework assignment as you’re about to head out in the morning. Keep everything organized by subject with a homework organizer. It’ll help establish good organizational habits.

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Amazon

Clothes for Each Day

Pick up an outfit organizer like this so you can save yourself a lively discussion before school. These tips can help transform a crowded closet.

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Amazon

Divide by Size

Does your kid keep growing or do multiple children share a closet? Separate hanging clothing by size just like they do in the stores with closet rod dividers that you can label.

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Amazon

Keep Accessories Close By

Slip an accessory pocket over the back of a closet door to match socks, underwear, barrettes, hats and more ahead of time. You can purchase accessory pockets at Amazon.

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Amazon

Keep Socks Clipped Together

Keep pairs of socks with their mate, pajama sets or matched outfits together by using a small sock clip after laundry. This will help pairs stick together, even if they’re discarded on the ground. When winter comes, you’ll want to have one of these fun mitten drying racks around to keep them in pairs.

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Originally Published: July 30, 2019