Fighting the Morning Time Bandits ...

My children are grown-up now but I well remember the stress of getting them going for school and the last minute dramas as one of them couldn't find something that was needed for the day. The comfortable contigency time that I had left would just get eaten up by the 'time bandit' of finding whatever it was that had gone missing. One particular bug-bear was when different subjects used the same colour exercise books and it was impossible to identify them without taking them out of the pile or off the shelf. Some children solve this issue by carrying a bag around with all their books that feels like a bag of bricks, but that is clearly not ideal. So here's a tried and trusted top tip to save time looking for exercise books: you can colour code them by putting a flash of coloured tape on the spine. If you have any left over Christmas tape, that would be ideal. That way, your child can identify a book from the spine and not have to take the whole book out of the pile or off the shelf to read what it says on the front. I'm afraid this isn't going to help with my particular favourite last minute cry from my daughter that today was non-uniform day. More than that, it would be 'Dress in Red' day or 'Christmas Jumper' day or some other type of day that necessitated going through all our wardrobes. Nevertheless, I hope it fights back against one of your family's morning time bandits.