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About halfway through this summer, I realized something:

I cannot do another school year in survival mode.

For the last three years, life has felt chaotic. Every September I tell myself the same thing: This is the year things are going to get better. We’re going to be organized. I’m going to stay on top of everything.

And then somehow I spend the next nine months asking everyone where their shoes are, telling my son what’s for school lunch, reminding people about soccer practice and wondering why there are three backpacks on the kitchen table.

Not this year.

This summer became the Great House Clean-Out and Simplification. I have gotten rid of a ridiculous amount of stuff, reorganized spaces that weren’t working for us and generally started looking around my house asking, Why are we living like this when we could just…not?

One of the biggest changes? I turned our mostly useless coat closet into a family command center for backpacks, schedules, keys, my purse, the dogs and basically all the stuff that was making our house feel chaotic.

And yes, this project eventually resulted in me buying a gigantic 27-inch Skylight Calendar. I’ll eventually share more of those projects, because there have been a LOT of them.

But one of the biggest changes for back-to-school started with something very simple:

Our coat closet was useless.

Who Actually Uses a Coat Closet Anymore?

Okay, I’m sure plenty of people do.

We live in the Pacific Northwest, so obviously we own coats. But if I’m being completely truthful, our coats usually end up hanging on a chair somewhere.

That’s assuming we’re wearing one at all.

Meanwhile, the stuff we actually use every single day had no home.

Backpacks ended up on the kitchen table. Or on top of the dog kennel.

My purse would land wherever I happened to put it.

Keys, phones and wallets needed somewhere to go.

And our giant dog kennel was just…there. In the middle of everything.

So I started looking at this closet right next to our front door and thought:

Why am I dedicating all of this prime real estate to coats?

That’s when I decided to turn our coat closet into a family command center.

And honestly, once I started thinking about it, it solved basically every problem I had with that part of the house.

My Coat Closet Became Our Family Command Center

The location was perfect because it’s right by the door we actually use.

Instead of coming home and throwing backpacks on the table, they could have a designated spot.

The dog kennel could move inside and become a little more hidden and cozy instead of being a giant cage sitting in the middle of the room.

I could add hooks for my purse and, yes, the occasional coat that actually makes it onto a hanger.

I also added a pretty little gold tray for what I lovingly think of as the:

WALLET. KEYS. PHONE.

dumping station.

Because apparently the secret to being organized isn’t convincing your family to stop dumping their stuff everywhere.

It’s giving them an attractive, strategically located place where they’re allowed to dump it.

Here are a few it the items we used in the command center photo:

Gold catchall tray

43 inch coact hooks for backpack storage

Once I had the physical stuff figured out, though, there was still another problem.

Our schedules.

And that’s when I decided this command center needed a calendar.

Not a cute little calendar.

Not a tasteful little calendar.

A giant-ass calendar.

Enter the 27-Inch Skylight Calendar

Let me acknowledge this immediately:

Yes, the Skylight Calendar is expensive.

And yes, I bought the biggest one.

Did I need a 27-inch digital calendar?

Probably not.

Did I have reasons?

Absolutely.

Last year, we bought our son a digital calendar for the game room. It wasn’t a Skylight, but it did the basic job I wanted it to do.

He could see what was for school lunch. He could see when he had practice. Everything was right there.

There was only one small flaw in my brilliant system:

He had to actually look at it.

Spoiler: he did not.

So I spent the next nine months telling him what was for lunch every morning and reminding him when practice was.

Which, technically, made me the family calendar.

Zero stars. Do not recommend.

This year, I knew that if a digital family calendar was going to work for us, it couldn’t be tucked away somewhere.

It needed to be impossible to ignore.

That’s why the size of the 27-inch Skylight Calendar was actually one of the biggest selling points for me.

Sitting right there at our new command center, we can ALL see it.

Why a Huge Visual Calendar Makes Sense for Our Family

We are a very tech-friendly family, so going digital made sense for us from the beginning.

But I also wanted something extremely visual.

My son has ADHD and dyslexia, and in our house, being able to see things big, clearly and visually makes a huge difference. I can use colors, emojis and checklists instead of expecting him to remember everything I’m saying as we’re trying to get out the door.

He can look over and see what’s for lunch.

He can see when he has practice.

I can add chores for him—and this child loves a good checklist.

My husband can see when I have a nail appointment.

We can all see when we need to be at a soccer tournament.

Nobody has to ask me.

Or, at least, that is the dream.

Please check back with me in February.

The Feature That Really Sold Me

The giant screen got my attention, but one of the features that really pushed me over the edge was being able to send information from school communications into the Skylight system instead of manually entering every single thing myself.

Because you know what I absolutely do not want to spend my free time doing?

Sitting down with a school newsletter and individually adding:

No school Friday.

Spirit week.

Picture day.

Random Tuesday thing.

Early release.

Some themed day my child will inform me about at 9:47 p.m. the night before.

Being able to get those school dates into our family calendar with far less manual work was a HUGE selling point for me.

Because that’s really the entire point of this project.

I am trying to remove work from my life, not create a prettier system that requires me to do more work.

I’m Using It for Meal Planning, Too

The other thing I wanted to solve was food.

Not necessarily cooking—I’m not claiming a digital calendar has suddenly transformed me into someone peacefully preparing dinner while classical music plays in the background.

I just want to remember what the hell I planned to make.

I can put our dinners into the calendar for the week so I can actually see the meal plan instead of buying groceries with excellent intentions and then forgetting what those intentions were three days later.

I can also keep track of our grocery list.

And for school mornings, my son can look at the calendar and see what’s being served for lunch instead of asking me.

Every.

Single.

Morning.

This alone may eventually pay for the calendar in emotional damages.

Is the 27-Inch Skylight Calendar Overkill?

For some families?

Absolutely.

I’m not going to sit here and pretend everyone needs an enormous expensive digital calendar hanging in their house.

You don’t.

There are cheaper options. There are smaller options. Some people are perfectly happy with a paper calendar on the refrigerator.

And if your current system works, PLEASE do not let the internet convince you that you need to replace it.

But our system wasn’t working.

I had already tried putting a smaller digital calendar somewhere my son was supposed to check.

It became one more thing I had to remind him to check.

What I needed was something central, visual and big enough that everyone could see what was happening without coming to me for the answer.

For our family, that’s what made the giant Skylight worth the investment.

The Bigger Goal Wasn’t Really a Calendar

This is the part I keep coming back to.

I didn’t spend my summer reorganizing because I suddenly developed a passion for storage containers.

I was tired.

I was tired of starting every school year feeling hopeful and ending up right back in survival mode.

I don’t expect a command center to magically make our lives perfect. Soccer tournaments will still happen. School will still send approximately 4,000 pieces of information. Someone will still lose something five minutes before we need to leave.

Probably me.

But I can make our house work a little harder for us.

That’s what turning this closet into a command center was really about.

The backpacks now have a home.

My purse has a home.

Wallets, keys and phones have a home.

The dogs have a cozy little space instead of their big-ass kennel sitting in the middle of the room.

And our family schedule is right there where everyone can see it.

Here’s to a School Year With Slightly Less Chaos

The Skylight Calendar isn’t the only thing I’ve done this summer to simplify our lives and make back-to-school feel more manageable.

Not even close.

There’s been decluttering. Organizing. Getting rid of an absolutely shocking amount of stuff. Rethinking spaces in our house that weren’t actually serving us.

And I’m going to share more of those projects here because I’m starting to realize that sometimes getting organized isn’t about becoming an organized person.

Sometimes you just have to make it easier to put your crap where it belongs.

Our new family command center does exactly that.

Will this finally be the school year where I don’t spend nine months in survival mode?

I’ll report back.

But for the first time in a while, I actually feel like we’re starting the year with systems designed around how our family really lives instead of how I think we’re supposed to live.

And that feels like a pretty good start.