I don't know about you, but we don't like summer to end over here. We enjoy the lazy schedule of sleeping in and going to bed late. Reading more novels for fun and no homework. But alas, it must come to an end.

With the new school year comes a fresh wave of school supplies, new clothes, new shoes, a new backpack. We "shop" our school supplies from the previous years in the interest of saving money and giving things a second life. But even still, new items are inevitably needed and if the old stuff doesn't leave first, none of it has anywhere to go, and by October the closet looks like four kids live here instead of two.

Try a simple swap rule this year. For every new thing that comes in, one old thing goes out. The busted backpack, the sneakers with the hole starting in the toe, the shirt that stopped fitting sometime around June. The new stuff earns its spot, and the space just kind of makes itself.

Happy school year!