The end of the school year is here. It’s time for graduation parties, BBQs, summer camps, and family vacations. We’re busy trying to keep up with every event and our minds are whirling with last minute reminders—buy a gift for the teacher, sign up for soccer camp, pick up the graduation gown, turn in registration forms, wash the baseball uniform. Our schedules are full and the weight on our minds is immense. Let’s all take a deep breath, get organized around our thoughts and chores, and recapture the joys of a childhood summer.

As the school year comes to a close, your kids are cleaning out their desks and lockers and bringing home massive amounts of graded assignments, art projects, and severely abused school supplies. Don’t let this mess clutter up your home. Take the time to sort things out.

Have the kids help go through their homework and choose a few items to save as keepsakes. Remember to be selective with what you keep, saving just 10 papers for each grade will leave you with about 150 keepsakes. Artwork can be stored in a bin or storage drawer and homework assignments in a 3-ringed binder. If you want to cut out the paper clutter, go digital. Photograph or scan the artwork and homework to make a digital ‘yearbook.’

Discard any broken or worn out supplies. Items that can be salvaged for next school year can be stored right in your child’s cleaned out backpack. Make a list of these ‘still good’ supplies on your August calendar so you know what you don’t need to buy when you receive next year’s school supply lists.

Keep your calendar on you at all times! I highly recommend using a calendar app on your phone—since your phone is already in hand, it’s the most convenient way to always have access to your schedule. Be sure every graduation, BBQ, camp, and sign-up deadline makes it onto your calendar.

Use your calendar to schedule time for housework and chores, too. I use Google calendar and create reminders for all the little things I need to remember like: pick up the dry cleaning, turn in payment for summer camp, write a blog post about how the last week of school might drive you insane. What I love about Google’s calendar reminders is that they roll over to the next day if not marked ‘done.’ If you don’t get to something, don’t worry, it will be there in bright red to taunt you into completing the task tomorrow. And when you do complete the reminder, you swipe to mark it ‘done’, and there is something immensely satisfying about that swipe. You can also set reminders and calendar entries to repeat on a schedule—my plants are grateful I have a repeating reminder to give them water.

Having everything on your calendar allows you to free your mind of all those events and chores and enjoy a more carefree summer.

While self-care should be a top priority, in order to get to a state where you can relax and reflect, you need to have a handle on all the things that are causing you stress. In order to do that, you need to have a plan of attack—a schedule—for getting it all accomplished. So you’ve sorted school supplies, calendared every event, and calendared even more. Great! Now it’s time to relax.

Being a working mom is hectic, being a stay-at-home mom is hectic, being a dad is hectic, it’s all hectic, life is messy! It is essential that you find things that bring you peace and perspective. What calms you? What gives you a dose of sanity? For me, it’s a nice long solo stroll through Target, it’s sitting in the warmth of sunshine—like literally, you might drive by my house and see me just sitting in the middle of my driveway trying my best to soak in vitamin D, it’s leaving my phone out of earshot and playing, I mean really playing, with my kids. It doesn’t matter what it is or how silly it seems, do things that are relaxing, rejuvenating, and that give you a sense of freedom just like you felt as a kid in the summertime.

We made it.

Another school year is complete.

Sit back, relax, and enjoy your summer.