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How to organize IEPs and autism paperwork to save time and stress Autism-Friendly Home Organization Strategies for Overwhelmed Parents Part 6 #153

• Caroline Thor - Professional Organizer - KonMari® Consultant

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Is your house full of piles of papers, forms, and reports… but you can never find the one you need when it matters? You're not alone.

In this final episode of the mini-series for World Autism Acceptance Month, I’m talking about one of the biggest sources of stress for parents of autistic children — paperwork. From IEPs and school communication to therapy notes, medical assessments, funding forms, and everything in between, the amount of documentation we juggle can feel endless.

But here’s the good news: organizing it doesn’t have to be overwhelming.

I’ll walk you through a practical, step-by-step process to declutter and organize your autism-related paperwork in a way that’s simple, sustainable, and supportive of your real life — even if you're neurodivergent yourself or have very little time.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Why autism paperwork feels so emotionally heavy — and how to change your relationship with it
  • A simple method to sort and categorize everything (even if it’s stuffed in drawers and bags)
  • How to build a flexible system that works for your brain — digital, physical, or a mix
  • Smart tips like advocacy highlight sheets, visual sorting, and working folders
  • Why this small act of organization can help you feel calmer, clearer, and more in control of your child’s care

This episode is especially for you if:

  • You’ve ever torn the house apart looking for a form
  • You feel buried by IEPs and documents you don’t know what to do with
  • You want less stress and more clarity when advocating for your child

Whether you're raising an autistic child, a neurodivergent child, or just navigating a lot of life admin, this system will help you breathe easier.

Mentioned in this episode:
🎁 Download my free guide: 15 Minute Declutter Reset for Moms of Neurodivergent Kids – perfect for making real progress in small chunks of time.

If this mini-series has helped you feel more supported, I’d be so grateful if you left a review or shared it with a fellow parent who needs it.

I would LOVE to hear from you. Text Message me here.

Thanks for listening! For more organizational motivation, support and free resources:
Join my online membership Clutter Free Collective
Join my podcast Facebook group Living Clutter Free Forever Podcast: KonMari® Inspired Organizing | Facebook
Visit my website www.caroline-thor.com
Come and say 'hi' on Instagram @caro.thor
Follow me on Facebook @carolineorganizer

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Autism Friendly Home Organization Strategies for Overwhelmed Parents a special mini -series with me, caroline, for World Autism Acceptance Month in 2025. This year's theme for World Autism Month is Celebrate Differences, and I could not love that more. I'm a mum of a child with autism and PDA, so I know firsthand how unpredictable life can feel. Flexibility isn't just helpful in my world, it's essential, and while our home is far from perfect, having it organized in a way that supports us has made all the difference. I created this series to share practical, realistic strategies that help you create a calm, clutter-free environment, one that works for your child, your needs and your energy. Even if you're not raising an autistic child, these tips can help any family, because building a home that supports your real life and celebrates what makes you unique benefits everyone. Let's get into it, okay.

Speaker 1:

So here we are at day six, my bonus day of my extra special little mini series, and today I want to talk to you about organizing paperwork, because paperwork is the thing that most families struggle with, whether they have a child with autism or not, but when you have a child with autism or any child with special needs, it does tend to create a lot of extra paperwork that most families are not having to deal with, and it can leave you feeling really overwhelmed. So we end up with these paperwork mountains of IEPs, therapy reports, assessments, medical documents and today I want to talk to you about how to get it under control without feeling buried, so that you can feel calmer and when you're heading out to a meeting or an appointment, you can put your hand on that piece of paper and that level of stress is just removed. So if you've ever turned your house upside down looking for that one form right before a meeting, this episode is for you, because when we organize this stuff, we're not just decluttering paper, oh no, we're reclaiming mental clarity and emotional space. So why do these tiny, little, thin bits of paper feel so heavy? It's because it's not just paper. They represent decisions, they represent advocacy, they represent effort and they represent advocacy. They represent effort and they represent emotion, and no one gives you a system for it, so it piles up. You don't have that time built into your day, organized into your system, that you're going to say, right, well, we've now got a child with autism. We're going to say, right, well, we've now got a child with autism, we're going to start getting loads of papers. Let's set up a system. No, what happens is it gets put on a pile and the pile grows and grows and before you know it, it looks so overwhelming you don't even know where to start. So it's easy to avoid dealing with it because it's basically emotionally loaded, and let's talk then, step by step, about how to get it organized. I've done this recently for a family who have a child with autism, and we did specifically look at the paperwork to do with this child, and that is what gave me the idea of this episode, because I think it's something that so many of us struggle with when we have a child with autism.

Speaker 1:

Okay, first of all, gather it all in one place. First Get it central, get it into a bin or a folder or a drawer or a washing basket. Just get it central and really go to every place in the house you can think of that there could be a piece of paper and search for them. Let's make sure we've got every single piece of paper before we get started. We're talking in the car. Have you taken a letter with you into the car and put it in the side pocket? Look in your bags, in your rucksacks the side pocket. Look in your bags, in your rucksacks, in your bedside table, in the kitchen drawer. Where are those pieces of paper hiding Down the back of the sofa? Okay, get it central. Once you've done that, bring your container that you've put them into, and if you have an empty dining room table, fantastic.

Speaker 1:

Or you might want to spread it all out on the floor and sort it into broad categories. So one category could be IEPs and school communication. Another category could be therapy reports and assessments, and what I like to do is write a post-it note or a blank piece of paper, put that title on it and then I can see that's where I'm collecting anything to do with IEPs and school communication. They're going to go by my header there. So IEPs and school communication, therapy reports and assessments, medical documentation and then notes, receipts and funding forms. So you're going to separate out your pile that you've collected so that they're spread out among these four headings, and it might be that you decide, okay, we've got something else in our family, we need a different heading as well. Fine, then separate them out.

Speaker 1:

The important thing is that they're now categorized and then create a basic system, either digital Are you going to scan them all and create folders digitally the way you're going to store everything, or do you want to keep them on paper? Pick whatever suits for you, or maybe a mix, and then use clearly labeled folders. Whether this is digitally or physically, you must make sure that you clearly label your folders. Or maybe you're going to use ring binders with dividers, which is absolutely fine, but again, make sure you are really clearly labeling them. And then go through each of your piles. So let's say we've got our pile that's IEPs in school communication. Sort that pile chronologically, make sure that there are no bits of paper left in there that actually you don't really need, because there's sometimes bits of paper get put in a pile and then actually when we look at it we think, oh, I don't need to keep this, this isn't important enough to keep, so those can be decluttered out and then file the IEPs and school communication papers away chronologically. And then I highly recommend you go through and do that with each of your categories so that they're all filed.

Speaker 1:

And then my last top tip for a basic system is to have a working folder for active items, so things like this month's IEP, this month's appointment letters, so that you don't have to go looking through larger folders to find them. You know that everything you need for the current status, the current appointments and for this month perhaps, are together in a small folder that you can just pick up and take with you every time you go to a meeting or an appointment. So that would be my advice for you. Things that will make it easier. You can use color coding or symbols if your brain is visual, so that if you open the folder you can see okay, red is IEPs, green is therapy and reports assessments. You can snap and scan key documents and store in a cloud folder like IEP essentials. You could keep an advocacy highlight sheet, so a one-page summary of key things like the date of diagnosis, current supports, next goals. I love having this because then if you're going to an appointment, you can take that sheet with you and when someone says when was the diagnosis, you're not sort of having to rack your brain. You've got it all there in front of you to support you through any meetings or appointments that you need to go to. And if you are yourself neurodivergent, keep it simple One system, one spot, repeatable.

Speaker 1:

Now I would put money on the fact that when you look at your very large pile of papers that you've collected together, you're going to feel overwhelmed. This is the brilliant thing about papers you do not have to do it all in one go. You could set a 10 minute timer and sort a few more of the papers, and what I do is I take a plain piece of printed paper, I fold it in half to create like a temporary wallet and I write on the front of it what the category is. So if it's IEPs in school communication or if it's medical documentation and all the ones that I've already collected together, I keep in this like temporary folder, and that means that you can get your piles of temporary folders out. You can lie them on the floor and you can spend another 10 minutes sorting the next few bits from the big pile, and then, if you run out of time, it's very easy to collect your temporary folders together, put them back on the top of the pile and you're ready to go next time and carry on.

Speaker 1:

This is why papers are so great to declutter and organize, because it's not something that you have to do all in one go. If you had dumped all of your clothes out of your closet onto your bed to sort and organize, you've got a bit of a time constraint going on. If you want to be able to go to bed that night, it needs to be finished. Papers isn't like that. You could even like I do sometimes. I know that cooking the pasta if we're having pasta in the evening takes 15 minutes. I can give myself 10 minutes of that to do a quick decluttering job during that time, and for you that could be papers. If that's what you're working on, you're not failing if it's messy. You are a parent doing your best with a lot on your plate.

Speaker 1:

But one thing I know for certain is that having the paperwork for your child organized is going to just relieve so much stress and pressure for you. So once your paperwork is sorted, you can then show up to meetings confident and calm. You can leave the house confidently and calmly because you'll know where to find what you need to take with you. You deserve to feel in control of your child's care, not buried by it, and I think sometimes we get so overwhelmed by all the paperwork that accompanies our kids. We don't feel like we have any say over it anymore. We don't understand anymore where we're up to, we don't know what the next step is going to be, and that is a horrible position to be in.

Speaker 1:

So start small, keep it simple and know, just like in my previous episode, progress is more important than perfection, and one thing that I would recommend is, once you have your system set up, decide on a time schedule like every week or every two weeks or once a month, you're going to take any new papers that have come in and you are going to file them away into your new system so that you can stay on top and in control. If you're now feeling inspired to get other areas of your home organized to support you, make life less stressful but you know you really struggle to find the time then go to the show notes and there you will find a link for my 15-minute declutter reset for moms of neurodivergent kids. You can click on the link and download it for free, and it will help you get a few areas of your home sorted out using just 15 minutes at a time. I hope you find it super useful. So that brings to a close my mini series that I've had this week in honour of World Autism Acceptance Month.

Speaker 1:

I hope you have found it useful. I look forward to being able to continue to support you with your journey with your child. If you have found these episodes useful for you, please leave a review. It makes the world of difference to how many people find this podcast and I would be so, so grateful. Until next time, if you've enjoyed this episode, please send the link to a friend you know would appreciate it, subscribe and leave a review. I look forward to bringing you more organising tips next time, but if you can't wait until then, you can go to my website or find me on Instagram, at carothor, or on Facebook at Caroline Organiser. Thanks for listening and I look forward to guiding you on your journey to find your clutter-free ever after.