Candita Clayton, a professional organizer and founder of Your Life Organized, says the first step is to get rid of everything you don’t want, use or need anymore.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

Providence Journal / tom murphy

Face it: No matter how long you keep those beach chairs in your car trunk, summer’s over. It’s time to pack up the hot-weather gear and buckle down — not only at school, but at home as well.

Fall has long been viewed as the unofficial start of the new year, says Candita Clayton, a professional organizer who founded a company called Your Life Organized to help people get their lives in order. It’s the perfect time to get organized and set up routines to make the year go more smoothly, and she’s ready with plenty of tips to help you and yours prepare for the “new year.”

Some involve cleaning up. Others are designed to help families set up routines for the school year. But they’re all about being organized, which helps make hectic lives seem less crazy.

The first thing to do? Take stock of where you are and what’s bugging you the most, Clayton said.

Do you want to clean and organize specific areas, such as a closet or a garage? Or do you need to set up routines to organize the family’s schedule, especially when it comes to getting out the door on time in the morning? Be as specific as possible — such as coming up with a system for handling school lunches to make sure they’re ready each morning.

Next, prioritize. Pare the list to a manageable number of three or four tasks that will make your life better, Clayton said.

Don’t set unattainable goals (for example, don’t vow to get both the basement and the garage cleaned by the end of the week), she cautioned. But do enlist the support of family members.

And remember that sometimes one little change can go a long way to making life simpler, Clayton said.

One great example: “Laundry is one of those things — the more on top of it you are, the better your life is. So it’s great to just get in the habit — every morning when you get up, throw a load of laundry in. When you get home, you fold a load of laundry. Then you’re never going to have tons and tons of laundry.”

The same is true of cooking during the week, Clayton said. “If it’s humanly possible to meal-plan, I highly recommend it. If you have sort of an idea of what you’re going to be serving for the week, you run out and get those things,” she said. She’s also a strong proponent of shopping services, such as the Peapod shopping service operated by Stop & Shop or buying food from the milk truck run by Munroe Dairy. “I swear by those services. I think they’re great.”

The bottom line, she said, is that getting organized and having routines makes life easier for everyone —especially for families with kids heading back to school. “Creating a system before school actually starts is a really great thing.”

Here are other tips to get you started:

CLEAN YOUR CLOSETS

In the fall, “one of the first things people start thinking about is their wardrobe,” Clayton said. “No matter who you are, you’ve got to change your wardrobe over [for fall].”

First, pack away all the summer clothes — “they have no business in your current closet,” she said. Then break out the fall wardrobe and try on each and every piece of clothing. “It’s a matter of pulling stuff out and trying it on and asking yourself, ‘Do I look good in it? Do I feel good in it?’ If not, toss it.”

One of the biggest problems people have is that they keep clothes that don’t fit or are out of style, even if they haven’t worn them for years, she said. “Really review what you have in there and you’ve got to be ruthless,” Clayton said. “. . . It does not make you feel good to have clothes that don’t fit you in your closet.”

ORGANIZE THE GARAGE

Fall is the perfect time to clean out the garage, before you pack away the beach stuff and break out the tools for fall gardening and winter snowstorms, Clayton said.

The first step is the most important: Purge. Get rid of everything you don’t want, use or need anymore — that includes your child’s first tricycle now that she’s heading off to college.

“Once you purge, you can separate out the space according to what you need it for,” Clayton said. Create separate areas for gardening, or for car maintenance, or for tools or sporting equipment. Keep like things together.

“Then, say to yourself, ‘How do I want to store these things?’ ” You can invest in a labyrinth of shelves and hooks, or simply drive a couple of nails into the wall.

(Meanwhile, as an aside, don’t forget to get your snow blower tuned up now to make sure it’s working properly before that first snowstorm hits.)

TUCK AWAY THE TOYS

Ideally, parents should routinely go through their children’s toy supply, getting rid of those no longer played with, Clayton said. But this task is especially important this time of year because those December gift-giving holidays are not that far away.

Again, be ruthless. Junior probably isn’t still interested in his Fisher Price farm set if he’s playing Grand Theft Auto on PlayStation.

Once you’ve decided which toys to keep, have your kids help create a workable storage system. Use colorful containers labeled with their contents. (Use pictures if your child can’t yet read.) Every few months, go through current toys and note which ones your kids no longer play with or are no longer age appropriate. These can be passed on or donated, which Clayton said “is a subtle and positive way to promote sharing among children.”

If a child insists on keeping a toy that he or she no longer plays with, put the toy in a container and store it away.

SORT THE SCHOOL WORK

Get each child a plastic container, clearly labeled with his or her name. Keep these in an area that is easy for both kids and parents to access, and explain that all papers parents need to see have to move out of backpacks and into these containers. Go through it every night.

Save the meaningful papers and artwork and toss the rest. Put the "keepers" in a separate container, to avoid creating new piles of clutter — as well as to prevent losing a paper you wanted to save.

SPEAKING OF PAPERS — MAIL CALL

We all get too much mail. So create a system for dealing with it so it doesn’t pile up on counters and desktops. “The main thing is to deal with the mail as soon as you get it,” Clayton said. With your mail in hand, “stand over the trash basket and recycle bin. As many things as you can get rid of, get rid of them. Take the catalogs and magazines to places you’ll actually read them — the bathroom, your bedside table. And if you have save magazines that come into your house, put them in a magazine rack.”

What about bills? Clayton recommends a two-part filing system. One file is for incoming bills that need to be paid. The second is for bills that have been paid and need to be saved; she suggests keeping important those bills, as well as receipts, in an accordion folder. Discard other bills such as cable and electric bills, unless you need to retain them for tax purposes.

Designate an area of your house where backpacks, jackets, boots and the like can be stored daily, Clayton said. The best spot is near the door that your children use most frequently. Get your child in the habit of immediately putting away these items when he or she walks inside the house.

You might hang hooks near the door to keep jackets and sweatshirts from being piled on the floor by the door, she suggested. Buy small bins or containers for each child and use these to store his or her mittens, hats and similar items.