My current system...

          I came up with a system that worked for me. I've been trying this for a few weeks, and it's so far the most agreeable and flexible system I've used.

          Due to my increased workload in school, I've made it a point to allocate Monday to Wednesday afternoons to focus on things at work. This means that I will be back later in the afternoon, and will be exhausted mentally and physically. At night, I opted to relax and rest. On Thursday and Friday afternoons, I made sure I will be back earlier, to rest and to do school work with the kids. This continues onto Saturdays and Sundays. My boy has been very cooperative with the work assigned to him. I would explain to him what is
expected from the exercise, and he'd be off to finish them by himself. Then, I'll have time to help the girl with her work. 

I tidied their school bags everyday according to their school timetable. My son has only a few books, so he brings all to school everyday. As for my daughter, I sometimes have trouble to quickly finding her books. She has 2 stacks of books, one for the first half of the year, and the other is for the second half of the year. I did not want to put them away, out of sight. So I colour coded them. She has a few codes. The blue is for the first half of the year, blue with yellow in the middle is for the second half of the year, and green is for her workbooks at home. Extra workbooks for the second half of the year is tied up, but remain with the rest.

Every Thursday, I'll go through and ear mark all the books for exercises. The green is for my daughter, orange is for my son.

This is a simple motivational chart I use with my son. He is sometimes reluctant to do his work. This chart gets him going. He gets a yellow sticker for every book (selected exercise) he finish. When he managed to collect a row of stickers, he gets to do one activity he chose. Usually it's related to art activities. :)

My on going project... half done.

I have been rather busy sorting and throwing away things. Let's just say,  I got fed up with the frequent sorting, pick ups and clean ups I had to do all the time. Mind you, I am not a very organized person. My work table is VERY messy but I'd like to think of it as the only place that is messy in my house. It's where I use my computer, printing, laminating, cutting and do all sorts of other things for my children. It's messy, but it's productive :P  

Anyway, I've decided to target one of my daily tasks that always makes me feel frustrated. Our wardrobe. We have lots of clothes. I mean A LOT! They were clothes from during the days when hubby and I were still slim and fit. Over the years, we struggled with losing and gaining back weights. - which means, we have to buy some more clothes for the current weight. Some of the clothes are still in good condition. I sent a few bags to our church earlier this year but we still have a lot. Most we do not wear (definitely won't fit) anymore. But there are clothes I'd like to keep - like the rainbow of cardigans I owned which are still in good condition ( I loved and really took good care of them), and jeans which I hope will never go out dated. There are also a lot of T-shirts which I think could come in useful when the kids are older. I mean, they do not have to wear new and trendy shirts at home, right? Old t-shirts are very comfortable to wear around the house - I believe the big stack that we have could last me and them many, many years. Oh.. not to mention the many bundles of baby clothes. We were not encouraged to give away our children's clothes, yet. 

Anyway, the main point is, though we have lived in our current house for over 6 years, we do not have proper storage for our clothes. When we moved in, our eldest was just a baby. Like any new parents, we had grand ideas of having a beautifully kept house - even with children. (yeah... that's too ambitious. I know) Our only wardrobe was upstairs. which makes it redundant after awhile. We took our baths and change our clothes downstairs. Running up and down to get our clothes wasn't our idea of exercise, especially when I had to change the kids clothes before they were properly potty trained. (remember that my girl was only diaper free at around 5 years old?) The wardrobe was actually too big to be moved downstairs anyway and I was reluctant too as it was a little broken with the first move from my MIL's house.

ermmm... I notice that I'm rambling too much. Anyway - to make it short - over the years, I used 6 baskets of various sizes to keep our clothes. When we want to wear certain shirt or pants, we will have to dig into the baskets - making it impossible to keep the clothes folded and neat. Every now and then, I'll have to dump them all out and sort them into their respective baskets as the clothes tend to get mixed. It's frustrating. So, I've finally gone and bought this....

It took me the whole day to sort our clothes and put them away properly into this beauty. Now I have all our clothes in sight. The 2 wardrobes contain all our work clothes, daily wear, and the children's clothes. The basket on the floor is for smaller towels. Another basket on the chest of drawers contains clothes that needed repair. It feels so nice to be organized.

Now I'll just have to think of a way to tackle another mountain of clothes in the store room. sigh.... I have a good mind of just bundling them up and send them to the church.... what do you think?