With the last day of school coming up for students across the country, excitement, goodbyes, summer plans, and….LOTS of items are brought home from school to clutter your home. Many parents are thinking what can I do with all of the extra school items? Here are a few helpful suggestions when it comes time to purge your home of all the extra supplies:

Box Up The Good Stuff

Consider creating a school memory box for each of your children to store important, save-worthy items each year. A large Tupperware box will likely do the trick and at the end of each year, or even during the school year as things come home, you can toss things that you just can’t part with.

At the end of their school career, it will be fun to look back through the memory box at those cute drawings from Kindergarten. Have your kids help you decide what they would like to keep and what they could part with.

Give Back With Unneeded Supplies

One child’s used box of crayons can be another child’s treasure. Including daycare centers, children’s hospitals — even schools — many places will often accept donated, used school supplies such as crayons and markers that the children they serve can continue to use.

A great online resource is The Crayon Initiative. They will accept your used crayons and donate them back to schools, hospitals, and art organizations.

Repurpose the Excess Materials

Many of the school supplies your kids bring home can actually be quite useful tools around the house.

• A used binder could be repurposed to keep all of your store coupons organized and neat.

• Folders that are still in good shape can be used to keep important documents for tax time in one central spot or to keep medical bills together.

• A pencil box can be used to store small toys such as Lego pieces or doll accessories.

Up-cycle Those Binders

There are plenty of opportunities to recycle used school supplies that you have no need for anymore. Binders can be recycled in Staples stores with the help of up-cycling company Terra Cycle.

A used binder will earn you a $2 credit towards a new one and the old will be used for new products.

Genius! TerraCycle also sponsors a Writing Instruments Brigade in which you can request a prepaid shipping label to return unwanted writing instruments which are then turned into new products such as storage bins. Staples Sustainability Center offers many services to further help reduce environmental impact.

Call Frog Hauling!

Short on time or resources? Call us! Frog Hauling can deliver a convenient, roll-off dumpster container directly to your driveway that you can fill with anything and everything you want! We’ll haul it to wherever you want us to and it will be out of your hair. Unfortunately, we can’t get the kids out of your hair for the summer!

Call us today for an estimate: (614) 258-3764.