Enlisting your kids help is all about the timing. Now that it’s the end of the school year it’s a great opportunity to get the kids involved in sorting out what should stay or go.

Summer tasks: Start the process of cleaning up and getting organized once they are finished school. Make a “countdown calendar” with tasks (and prizes if you wish).

Making room for new things: Kids find it hard to get rid of their stuff. You can help by mentioning the positive – getting rid of old stuff will make room for new toys and items that are right for their age.

The donation pile: Suggest donating unwanted items to the daycare, a charity, a neighbour, or a friend. Kids  feel better if they can find a good new home for their old toys.

Pick your favourites: Give your kids the chance to choose 5 of his or her favourite toys to keep. (The parents should decide how many toys and kids should choose which ones!)

Storage for toys: Ask your kids to sort their toys by “families”.  They can put all the Lego parts together, all the  Barbie’s together, all the stuffed animals together – and so on. Store the toys by “families”. Each one in a small container rather than one big box for all the toys.

Arts & crafts from school: We are the biggest fans of our little artists and in a perfect world we would keep every piece they have made. But of course, we can’t keep everything. A good idea is to make a box for each child. You can decide how big the box is and this can house the top 5 pieces of art work for each year.

Kids of different ages:  When there are a few kids in the house, some toys may not be right for the oldest child any more, but the youngest child may not ready for them yet.  These toys need to be put away. Pack them up and store them on a shelf. These toys will remain in good condition until the youngest child is ready for them.  You will be surprised how much money it saves you in the long run.

Moving with kids:

After sorting the toys,  your child  should ready to pack only what you have both decided to take with.

Not only does it saves you time and money, but you will have taught your kids how to manage their stuff.

Helping to pack:

Labels, stickers and photos: Ask the kids to take pictures of their items. Print the photos on stickers. They can pack the toys and stick each label onto the box.  Or they can make their own labels by drawing the contents of the box on the outside.

Scrapbook: Buy your kids a scrapbook to help them design their new room.

A day before the moving day

Personal backpack: Encourage your kids to pack a few toys, an MP3 player and books.  In this bag you should also put clothes, toiletries and medicine.  Take this bag with you to the new house (don’t send it with the movers).  While everything is still in boxes, your kids will have all they need to “survive” the first night in a new place.

A great recommendation for a book that I found at the public library:

“Ira says goodbye” by Bernard Waber.
Ira found out that his best friend Reggie is moving. They had their own tree house and secret hiding place. They even put their turtles together so  thatthey could be good friends too… and now Reggie is moving away….

How  do the good friends deal with the change?

Get the book and find out!