Here we are, with the evenings already noticeably shortening, the air temperature a thin jumper’s worth lower every day, and shop windows full of ‘BACK TO SCHOOL’ posters advertising ill-fitting black trousers and itchy tights. Where did the summer go?
Most parents dream of this day from the moment school breaks up back in July.
The new term – and with it the routine, and an ability to work without having to simultaneously deal with ‘bored’ children and warring siblings – can’t come quickly enough.
“IS IT SEPTEMBER YET??” Is the cry across the parenting land, mid-August.
And soon….it will be.
The alarm clocks will ring two hours earlier than we want them to. Book bags will fill up the hall. Packed lunch boxes will lie stagnating at the bottom of school bags. Forms will need filling, music lessons will need attending, homework will need doing, children will need taking to and collecting from football clubs, swimming lessons, guitar groups and friends’ houses.
And we will wish the summer holidays back again!
But September, for all its accent on the start of work and chaos, is great time of the year for a big family clear-out. Forget Spring Clean – the Autumn Clean is the biggie.
It’s a fresh new school year, a new start, and a chance to establish new systems, routines, and ways of all living and working together to make family life less like a chore-laden endurance test and more like….well, living.
Often there’s a new weekly schedule in the New Year, which means a new routine and schedule for you too.
This is a great time of the year to look at your childcare options, the structure you have around you to help you out, lift-shares with friends, family help, dog walking rotas, arrangements at work for flexi-time, care for the elderly relatives and so on.
So in the last week of this beautiful August, have a good, hard look at your family routine as you approach the new school year, and have that clear-out and spruce-up.
It’ll make your life much easier and less fraught doing it now than under a pile of smelly football socks and maths homework worries.
Enjoy these last, long summer days. Here’s to an organised family September!
