Gearing up for back to school? Grab a free Back to School Guide from MarthaStewart.com!

This colorful multi-page article offers tips and ideas for school-day fun, including free printables to organize school lunches, decorate notebooks and spiff up lunch sacks.

Offered in .PDF format, you'll need the free Adobe Reader to view and print.

Ready? Get organized for back to school:

Free Printable Back To School Guide

Kids using planners? I can hear the confused grumbling now. Well, isn't that just the latest Yuppie parent affectation!

Wrong! Teachers, parents and homeschool families know that training kids to the planner habit makes for successful students. School districts throughout the USA issue planners to pupils and integrate planner use into the school day. Homeschool families use planners to track and organize lessons, chores and activities, while techno-hip high school kids tote electronic organizers as a status accessories.

A student planner is only a tool. How do you teach a child to use one? It's a bit much to expect a 7-year-old to pore over a complicated biz-speak guide to time management and put the method to work independently.

Try these tips to teach kids the planner habit:

Move over, summer--a new school year is coming!

With the start of school, families face new organization challenges.

School bells ring--and so do early-morning alarm clocks. Shorter autumn days bring a hectic round of sports, activities and events, and calendars fill with cryptic notes.

Can the holidays be far behind?

Get organized now for the best school year ever!

Use these ideas to prepare your home and family for the busy days ahead:

Ah, summer! Baseball and sunshine, lemonade stands ... and back to school?

Yep. Summer or not, it's time to think about shopping for back to school.

Hang onto your wallets! With the rise of "back to school" as a two-month marketing exercise for retailers, coupled with cash-strapped school districts which have pushed more of the supply burden onto students' families, it can be a tough job to get the kids outfitted without breaking the bank.

Try these school shopping tips to save money, time and your sanity when shopping for back to school:

Getting organized! For many, that phrase is synonymous with "Buy Me!" Savvy retailers know that Get Organized Fever breaks out at predictable intervals, and tailor ad campaigns to capitalize on the desire to create an organized home. Too often, CEO hears the cry, "But I can't afford to get organized!"

No doubt about it, there are many marvelous products on the market to help achieve better home and personal organization. But getting organized doesn't necessarily require spending money.

Try these tips to get organized without becoming a spendthrift:

Here at OrganizedHome.Com, the e-mails arrive every week: "Help! I'm drowning in clutter and don't know where to begin!" Whether it's due to poor habits, a packrat spouse, or an advanced case of affluenza, too many home managers struggle under the burden of household clutter.

Clutter can clog the smooth workings of any home, imposing heavy costs on the household. Each day, time is lost searching for missing keys, phones or permission slips. A cluttered desk plays Hide The Credit Card Statement, yielding up the bill only after late fees are invoked. Belongings lost to clutter must be replaced, with the original surfacing just as soon as the replacement enters the house. Gotcha!

Time to declutter! But when you're peering over piles, mounds and stacks of stuff, it's hard to know where to begin and what to do.

Ready for an organized school year? Beef up your household notebook with these free printable back-to-school templates from Microsoft.com.

Parents will enjoy templates for academic calendars, whle teachers and homeschool families will appreciate gradebook forms, flash cards, supply lists and permission slips.

Since these templates are shared in various Microsoft formats, check version information before downloading:

Printable Back To School Planner Pages

Here at OrganizedHome.Com, we love 3-ring binders. That's why we adore this travel tip for families with children: use free printables to create a kid's activity binder before traveling.

Use these links to print free coloring pages, word games, puzzles and activity sheets. Assemble a binder for each child, and add a zipper bag containing crayons, markers, pencils and game tokens to keep the kids amused for hours of peaceful drive time.

Find free printables for kids at these Web sites:

KidsDomain.com Printables

PBSKids.org Games, Stories and Coloring Pages

TheKidzPage.com Coloring Pages

FamilyFun.com Printables

Summer's here: it's time to take to the road!

Summer vacation travel can be enriching, enjoyable and exciting--but only if you're organized. The family that fails to plan for summer travel can end up frazzled, frustrated and longing for the quiet comfort of home.

This year, get ready! We've assembled OrganizedHome.Com's best, easiest tips to organize summer vacation travel. Bon voyage!

They're here!

Tumbling from the school bus, fresh from Field Day, with papers and projects and petrified sandwiches spilling in their wake: your children. It's summertime, and the living is easy.

Yeah, right.

Summer vacation is wonderful, no doubt about it. Damp heads and wet bathing suits, backyard tents and fireflies in canning jars. "Look, Mom!" rings out a hundred times a day, from the top of the pool slide to the bug-dotted bottom of an upturned rock.

Here comes the Kool-Aid Mom! She's all sweet smile and tidy clothes, calling cheerful children from the corners of the yard with a bell-like voice and tray of sweating, jewel-toned glasses.

Then there's the second day of summer vacation.