Organizing with color is a fun way to organize a family. It can help you quickly identify where an item belongs or to whom an item belongs. You may not realize it but you probably already use color to organize your home. For example: your toothbrushes. Does everyone in your house have a different color? Of course they do, otherwise it would be confusing and could get a little gross.
Colors can also be useful in organizing your file cabinet. Blue for home related files, red for health related files, green for your money related files, etc. You do not even have to buy new files, just get little colored circle stickers to place on the corner of your current files. If you home school your children, having the kids files (along with other items) color coded can be very helpful. You could code things by subject or by child. It depends on how you want your system set up.
Organizing with color can also help solve the parent's never ending question of "Who...?" Here is an example. You walk into the kids bathroom and surprise, surprise, someone has left one of the pretty towels that matches the bathroom on the floor. Do you pick it up? I hope not. Do you know who left it there? Probably not. What now? Mom calls, "Who left the towel on the floor?" Here is an easier solution for next time. Go to the store (or your linen closet) and get a different color of towel for each kid to use. You could have pink for Jane and purple for Julie. Now when you walk in the bathroom and a pink towel is on the floor, you know that little Jane is the child that needs to come and take care of it. Oh, so easy!!
Once every family member has a color, then you can apply this method to almost anything. My kids each have a clip on the fridge in their color. They keep their spelling list, math facts, invitations and sometimes a current art project on their clip. You can color code the activities on your calendar. The color coding system also works well if you have multiples. Think about having 2 sippy cups out for your 1 year old twins and not remembering which cup belonged to which child. Again, always having green for John and blue for Mike makes this problem go away.
Do you use color coding in your home? Send me a note and let me know how you use color to organize your home.
