I confess to you…I was the homeschool mom who’s enthusiasm was difficult to reign in as September rolled around.

While many of my friends would eagerly pour over curriculum catalogs and our local bookstore “Teacher sales”, I was the one who would arrive early to our local office supply store’s Teacher Day. You see, I love to organize. I love color coding. I even love finding colorful pens, notebooks and other office miscellany designed to equip me for an orderly school year. While I confess, my wholly organized dreams and daily homeschool reality did not always align perfectly, my versatile toolbox of organizational tools were integral to my sanity through the years.

After graduating my youngest from our homeschool, I continue to seek out practical and well designed organizational tools for home and office. Here are a few of my favorite organizational tools:

Paper Mate InkJoy Pens – I think we all remember feeling like a failure when the teacher handed back our papers covered with red pen marks and writing. Give your children less fear of the red pen by spicing things up a bit and grade their math in purple, their writing in light blue, grammar in dark blue…well you get the idea. This set of Ink Joy pens from Paper Mate offers six different colors for your writing pleasure.

A staple resource for our homeschool was index cards. We used them to create math flash cards, to review science vocabulary and of course, my infamous Jeopardy game to review our lessons. These new trayed, multicolor index cards from Roaring Springs are practical and engaging for visual learners.

Organize your receipts and bills, school assignments or family medical records with these 13 Pocket Expanding Files – available in differing prints and colors, you may quickly wonder how you lived as long as you have without one! I have one on my desk at home for receipts/bills and one at my work desk for the endless paper that needs organized.

Post It Notes…enough said. Seriously though, use Post It Notes to keep track of the endless to do lists. Use them to color coordinate your children’s activities in your planner (a separate color for each child or activity) or use them to teach grammar to visual learners having each color represent a different parts of speech. The Post It ideas are endless!

If you are like me, you are excited at the possibilities for color-coded organization above. Quickly, let me introduce you to my favorite new school supply. The Genesis Shades Notebooks (with Colored Paper) are fabulous for note-taking, journaling, organizing assignments and any other activity you want to add a breathe of fresh air too!. I purchased the 3 color one several weeks ago and have been using it to organize my spiritual life: personal bible study notes in one color; weekly Pastor sermon notes in another and family and friend prayer requests in the third color. It provides a quick reference point and helps me to focus my attention more easily.

Happy Organizing!