It's hard to believe, but we are mere weeks (days for some parts of the country!) away from returning to the early morning scrambling to get kids ready for school.

One of the biggest time-wasters of those precious pre-dawn hours involves the all-important "Choosing of the Clothes". However, we've found some craft ideas that when combined with a little pre-planning can make this year wardrobe worry-free for your kids!

One super-simple tactic to try out before the buses even start rolling requires- absolutely nothing! Just ask your child to create a kid out of the clothes they plan on wearing the next day somewhere in their room. If it's the sort of room where neatness reigns, this should take care of the problem, and it can be a fun project for kids to style and pose their "clothing kids" differently every night.

However, if your child isn't diligent about keeping their room picked up, a "clothing kid" on the floor may just add to the madness. If that's the case, try taking the organizing upward! Keep an eye out at thrift stores or garage sales for a sturdy coat tree, or make your own using pine boards from the lumberyard. In addition to assisting with assembly, painting a wooden clothing holder to suit their fancy will give the child a sense of ownership. Every evening, the clothing tree should be decorated with the next day's outfit, including socks, underwear and a belt hung from the hooks.

If the bedroom lackings the floor space necessary for a clothing tree, a closet will do the trick and provide the additional perk of allowing the child to plan their wardrobe for the entire week. Hanging organizers can hold six day's worth of clothing and larger ones (not the shoe organizers, which will quickly become too cramped to hold an entire outfit) have enough space to allow labels (quickly and easily created with felt letters glued onto a felt rectangle label and then sewn onto the organizer) to be attached to the side or on the top, hanging down in the openings.

And if closet space is also problematic, here's the last (and greatest!) idea: large felt tags that fit OVER the hangers. The genius part of this idea is that it can actually SAVES space by getting pants out of the drawer and sharing the same place as the shirts! Supplies required are minimal: just a large enough piece of felt (suggested size is 18 x12") for each day of the week, strong hangers, and perhaps some clothes pins to make sure the pants stay on the hangers until they are needed. Cut the top corners off the felt rectangle, cut a hole in the top for the hanger to fit through, slice two X's in the bottom to hold socks and underwear and embellish as desired. (This would be an excellent place to practice some sewing skills! Buttons and rickrack would be adorable!)

With just a little planning, getting dressed in the morning can be a painless process for everyone and get the day off to a great start!

Fight the young prince/princess attitudes that can develop in younger siblings when it comes time for work!

Have each family member tackle his or her task list at the same time.

Pack the following day's meals the night before.

As anyone with children knows, dirty diapers smell worse than anything in the entire world. No kidding, once my dog ate cat poo and then threw it up, and even that did not compare to what it smelled like when my son starting consuming solids on a regular basis.

To combat this, and to make life easier in general, the Diaper Genie was born. For those of you unfamiliar with this contraption, it's made out of plastic and has a bucket at the top in which you put the used diaper. You then pull a lever (depending on the model) and it removes the diaper from sight, locking it away in a waste bag for disposal later. Diaper Genies require actual Diaper Genie bags, however, that may be in short supply when you really need a new one.

I have something similar that one can use with any plastic bags. Right now we're using regular old garbage bags in there and it seems to be working out all right. Except for one thing: The unbelievable, undeniable smell that counts as some sort of bio-terrorism in my book (or at least should). Regardless of carrying the odor away in the immediate, once you pull the bag out of the Genie to change it the smell is upon you--it's like that line from Michael Jackson's Thriller where Vincent Price discusses "the funk of 40,000 years." The new Diaper Genies are supposed to be even better at whisking away the smell, but I haven't used one to know whether or not when you pull out the full bag the smell might kill you.

Do you use a disposal system, and, if so, does it really work?

Diaper pic by Photocapy.

Time Magazine recently interviewed an editor-at-large from popular magazine Psychology Today. The topic? Children, and whether or not we're turning our kids into wimps. Hara Estroff Marano, the interviewee, had much to say on the subject of children, and how we raise them. Marano, who is also a grandmother and author of a new book titled A Nation of Wimps: The High Cost of Invasive Parenting, says we are turning our kids into wimps. She says we need to let our kids have bad experiences as it's the only way they learn.

Marano pointed out her research on the college campus, noting that her colleagues commented that many of the students they were treating lacked coping skills. Says Marano, "...they have no idea how to manage the vicissitudes of life." Why has this happened? Well, according to Marano we're worried about our kids being successful. We push them too hard to achieve, and we worry more about branding than experience, focusing on sending them to the best schools, etc., when perhaps the brand name of Harvard or Yale is not what they need. Access to information through the Internet makes everything fleeting and transitional and ultimately obsolete before we can even understand it fully.

Marano also argues, along with much of our nation, that our children are being over-medicated and that play time is not valued as it should be. And, shocker, she feels we're too involved in every aspect of our children's lives. So how to deal? Well, according to Marano, we need to step back, let kids prove their competence, let them play, and make sure we eat together five times a week. I don't know if doing these things will save our kids from being wimps, or if they're wimps in the first place, but she does provide an interesting perspective.

Your thoughts? Do you think we overprotect our children and undervalue their ability? Or is that what it takes to get through this crazy modern world?

Pic by summitcheese.