Who has Organization tips?????

Wow! I don’t know what to tell you about this because I am not the most organized type at home! At work I am extremely organized. This tendency towards lack of organization at home does make it difficult for me too! I often feel like I have to keep my entire family organized and at times it’s enough to make me crazy! My husband is no help because he needs me to make him lists so he remembers what he needs to do! I guess I’m posting just to say I understand where you’re coming from but on a much smaller scale! I only have two adhd kids!

I have some pretty major organizational issues myself — some kind angel *please* come here and help me get going to excavate the papers that have been waiting for four months — but I manage to keep my head barely above water most of the time.
You have to set priorities and work on only a couple of life-threatening issues first. Don’t try to do everything, and don’t try to get it perfect.
In particular, Keep It Simple. One backpack and all schoolwork in it, period. Backpack stored in the same place every single time. Stuff to go out the door in the morning stored on your shoes so you have to pick it up. Schedule for the family written on a whiteboard inside the house door and check daily; only mom changes the schedule, and if somebody else doesn’t tell you to add something to the schedule, tough luck if it gets missed. And so on.

I have found reward programs work the best for this kind of thing. I would have HIM develop a checklist with you of what he needs to do every morning to get ready. I would even make copies and have him check them off one at a time each day. After doing the checklist with him for 2 or 3 days, you let him start taking over. You do nothing except to possibly remind him in the beginning to look at his checklist. You can have him add the time needed for each activity if he has a hard time with realistic time estimation (as many kids like ours do). You set up a chart or collect the checklists so you can record his success. After he gets a certain number of checklists completed successfully (and make sure you check at first until you are confident he is not scamming you!), he earns some kind of a thing he wants. You determine what he wants to work for ahead of time and how many completed charts will be needed to earn it. You can also make “side bets” with your partner or with him directly as to how long it will take him to earn it, adding an additional incentive to make you wrong and take your money if he does a better job. This does a few things. First, it makes him responsible for defining the parameters of the program, so he is invested. Second, it removes any inadvertent reinforcement he may get when you nag him. Third, it emphasizes success rather than failure. It is important in my experience to use a total number rather than “three per week”, because if he blows it early in the week, he will stop trying. You can also increase the standard when he is successful for a while. After it is really working, you can start to “forget” about the reinforcements unless he mentions it. The hope is, the inherent reward of being successful will start to overshadow the artificial reward he is earning.

That’s my best suggestion, modifiable to the needs of your particular child. Hope that helps somewhat!

–- Steve

Well, Steve, my problem in using checklists with my daughter and my students is that *I* have so many organizational difficulties that *I* can’t keep up with the checklists. And since I have so much difficulty, I find them exhausting and frustrating, often humiliating.
There’s a saying in the military that you never give an order that you don’t expect to see obeyed.
As parent and teacher, I don’t ask anything of my students that I can’t follow up myself. And I don’t apply any systems that I find painful and frustrating.

We use a system similiar to Steve’s or I would have lost my mind long ago. The checklist is simple -never has no more 5 things on it -e.g. getting to the breakfast table on time, out the door for school by 7:15, feeding her bunny, practising her trumpet. It used to include getting homework started immediately after school, etc, etc But we don’t have to have that one on it anymore!!!!! She has realized what she has to do to tame the homework beast and that it is best done while she is still fresh.

Keep it simple and start small. Rome was not built in a day. You are building habits here. So pick things that are doable, measureable, observable ie-set the table. Have them check off their own list daily. Allowance is based on the checks at our house.

It has helped me keep my cool and her gain some control of her life. I am beginning to think that organization skills are tougher to teach than academic skills and org. skills don’t get the attention they need. Also, the individual’s developmental level seems to have a part. My child’s maturity level seems a little behind as well.

Good luck, keep us posted

I WOULD have agreed with you about 6 months ago — but now, having spent some time using a household org./declutter mentoring system promoted by ‘flylady.net’, I beg to differ: I bet your checklists are WAY TOO DETAILED.

Start small. Start simple. Write it down. Build routines…build habits! But use ‘babysteps’ — her advice reminds me of your tutoring guidelines!

IF you can’t keep up with the list — shorten the list! TRUST me, it works…my dishwasher broke in June and we have not yet had 48 hours with a dirty kitchen! If you knew me, you’d know this was a miracle…

With you all the way, Elizabeth!

If the system that is supposed to help you organize demands already-developed organizational skills, you’ve painted yourself into a corner.

Are you going to come here and help me excavate my papers? They got out of hand three moves and a major house rebuild ago …

my KITCHEN, not my home office! I don’t think I have anything to boast about there…

My only advice for the papers is to PITCH them…but that is not always effective OR appropriate. Plus, though I did make progress in the home office this summer, I still have about 12 hours of shredding to do…and that progress did NOT include going through and sorting my clipping files, correspondence files, several ‘paper junk’ drawers, and boxes of ‘good ideas to develop later’ file caddies and folders. Nor did I organize my major family history project, or my photos either recent OR family-historical…All I did was clear the floor (though that was progress in a big way!)

If I find a solution for ‘must-keep’ papers that works like the one for kitchens, I will LET YOU KNOW…!

Still, the housework guru says…if they stay in the pile long enough, it WILL be easier to pitch them unread…isn’t that comforting?

I’m a great believer in most things become irrelevant if you ignore them long enough. My mail box at work is always full much to the consternation of the secretaries. Once in awhile I stand by the waste basket and throw most of it in there!!!! Ah, all the things I don’t have to make decisions on doing because they have passed!!

And for the rest, well I decided long ago I couldn’t handle any elaborate organizational schemes. i put everything for one project in a box. When the project is done, I throw most everything out. I like the big office envelope boxes. I also have some big file boxes for each class I teach.

But I am probably not one to make suggestions–at one point I had a secretary tell me my office looked like it qualified for disaster aid!!!
(that was when the floor was being used as a desk which still happens with striking frequency. I do like piles too!)
Beth

Checklists for us work for awhile, not always til the behaviour we want gets established; but I like the idea of putting the responsibility on the child.

I like gradually building responsibility, using the principle of praising successive approximations I learned in first year psych. Ex. go from putting the lunch in the backpack to leaving it just outside it , then on the kitchen table. (We haven’t graduated to the fridge yet.) Praise remembering. I put an emergency granola bar in an outer backpack pocket for days my kids forget lunches so they come home hungry but not famished—law of natural consequences. You could also assign your older child the responsibility for reminding the younger ones or rotate the reminder job. A reminder list by the door (or shoes) is good.—good for the adults in the house too. In a cold climate, an organizer unit with a pull out drawer for each person’s mitts & hat is a help, although in our house it’s used mostly for spares. (Getting kids to put a mitt in each pocket and the hat down the sleeve works best.)

Some teachers assign a gazillion little notebooks—a disaster for our kids. The one binder for everything system works like a charm. Teachers are usually open to any system that will get the kids’ work to school. (As a teacher I use the one binder system for each course I keep—one copy of every handout/teaching note and a file save on a disc for each course; the rest I pitch.—does away with file folders. I keep a binder labelled “extras” in my classroom for kids absent or careless. (After two “losses”, I start charging for extras.) For non university stream classes I devote a half a period near the start of school to binder organization—divider labelling and organization, which helps alot. I post the labels on chart paper on the wall because after I assign them I can never remember what the order is, and it helps the kids.

Our sons’ school assigns detentions for forgotten books/homework, which helps take the load off me. My son served two in the first week, none since. Now he checks the list by the door daily and marked all his phys ed days on the fridge calendar since his teacher assigns detentions for not being properly dressed. I served notice at his school that I do not want him exempted from consequences because he’s in spec. ed. School consequences are a big help.