Oh heck.

This morning, I re-read Saturday's post on five tips to get your family's new life together off to a good start, and realized I forgot the most important one: organization.

So call this post "Everything I learned about organization I learned from a four year old."

When I made my first trip to Russia to meet my younger son, I took a lot of notes on what his life was like in the orphanage. And as I read them back later, I realized there was one strong common thread that ran through them. He had had to learn to be extremely organized. With 14 other children in his orphanage group, he was expected by his caregivers to dress himself, put toys away and keep the room tidy. And so I thought that if I could create some of the same opportunities for organization in his new home, it would ease his transition.

A clearly defined schedule, which I touched on in my earlier post, was part of it. But when my son's caregiver announced that it was time to get ready for outside time, he marched to an anteroom. There, he took off his "inside" clothes and hung them up in his own locker. He took out his outside clothes and put them on. (One of the things that impressed the adoption doctor who reviewed my son's video was how deftly he put on a snowsuit, hat, mittens and boots.) Inside shoes were taken to a shelf by the door, where they were exchanged for "outside" shoes or boots.

So when I got back from trip one, I looked at my house to see how I could organize it like the orphanage. I didn’t have a mud room, but I did have a small front hall closet. I bought two hanging sweater bags and designated spaces in them for shoes, hats, caps and mittens. And I told my older son we would start using them. As things would turn out, we would have four months to practice before trip two.

It was hard to kick old habits, hard to carefully place shoes in the hanging bag instead of just dropping them off on the floor. But it sure cut down on the confusion when we got ready for school and work in the morning.

More importantly, it was a big help when my younger son finally came home.