I am your Commander!

OK, so school has started, and with that the papers have come a' flyin' in from my kids' school.  Man! Did I ever send home this many papers? I don't think so.  But an informed Mommy is a happy Mommy.

Alas, a disorganized Mommy is a cranky Mommy.  Drum roll please......... enter our new Command Center!
So, this is a perfect example of a chaos fix.  I saw a need, and fixed it with jazz hands.  I do often wonder to myself (and now out loud to you, I guess) if I create the disorganization on purpose so I can have an undeniable excuse to get creative.  Oh well, chicken or the egg, blah blah blah.  What's important is that I LOVE my Command Center!

Yay!!!!!

So I found this amazing sheet metal place that cuts and binds custom sized sheet metal! They are local, they are inexpensive, and they are awesome! (Thank you Google!) I Command Stripped it to the side cabinet of my oven/microwave and now it's the base of my magnetic command center, and it cost me $28!!!!! Yes, that's right.  Not a typo.

I have made most of these components in the past, but with a few new additions, I have the perfect Command Center for me. I just Gorilla glued the SUPER STRONG mini magnets to the backs of the frames, pads, etc and then bought some more magnets that would do the rest of the work for me. Here they are from the top down:

This is my cleaning schedule.  Now that I'm home more, I cannot get away with "I'm too busy to clean", and let's just say that I'm waaaaaaaaaaaay out of practice.  So I found this fabulous schedule idea on Pinterest and I tweaked it to fit my life.

This was my first attempt at chaos fixing, about a year ago.  I LOVE this meal planner, once again stealing the idea from Pinterest.  I'm going to do a separate post on this one, how I made it, etc.

 This is my To Do level.  I just framed a sheet of paper that I printed "To Do" on and now it's a dry-erase To Do list.  Love it.  Then a little note pad, where I'm keeping track of the allowance I owe the kids. Then of course the ever important monthly calendar that I found at Office Depot. It mostly fits with my scheme.

cups for markers, pencils, erasers, etc and a reciept and mail (and coupon) holder

I love these.  I was walking Target's office supply isle, looking for a file holder for my kids' forms, work, etc from school for the command center.  Everything there was either too heavy, the wrong color, or way too expensive.  So, I made my own! I found one that would work and copied the design using my own fabric, chip board, paint, felt and a ton of adhesive spray.  See the original from Target and my copy below:

Lastly, I have the Lunch Box Station.  I just made that name up two seconds ago.  I'll have to work on that.  Anyhow, every night my kids sit down on the floor and pick one item from each box.  This is what goes in their lunches the next day.  I was making lunches with sandwiches, chips in a baggie, a veggie and a dessert.  Guess what was coming home in their lunch box every day... yep, you're right.  The veggie and the sandwich.  Well, no mare of that.  With this new system, I came to find out they don't even like sandwiches.  They picked the items to choose from, and that's how we came up with the chart above.  The chart and choices change according to my grocery trip for the week, but I try to stick to what they like, since it's working great! Now they eat everything, and haven't even mentioned that there isn't a dessert anymore!  

Not sure how I lucked out on that one.  :)

And that adorable little broom and dustpan comes in very handy at night when I spot sweep according to my cleaning schedule.  Got that baby at Hobby Lobby.  Love.  Lots and lots of love.

That's it! Now I feel calm, collected and ready to create more chaos so I can get on to my next fix!