I have a bit of a reputation for being extremely organized. I trace this renowned trait back to my childhood. I took a “gap year” before Kindergarten and spent the year with my grandma. I was in charge of planning each day (or at least as “in charge” as a four year old could be). Every morning, I told my grandma where I wanted to go, what I wanted to do and when we would eat.
I’ve always been a planner. I think part of my neatness comes from the fact that I’m a very visual person, and if something looks cluttered, it irks my soul. I’ve had a few people, including my own father, ask me to “organize their lives,” and that’s exactly what I’m trying to achieve through this blog post. I certainly can’t promise that reading this will automatically clean up your life, but maybe you’ll feel more satisfied with yourself if you can actually find what you’re looking for in that “everything” binder, drawer or corner.
My number one tip to staying organized is to accept the planner as your lifeline. In order to make the planner something you want to use, you might want to decorate it with different color schemes or any other system that works for you. Something I discovered last year is that having a sticky note where you can list all the tasks you have to complete that week – turning in a form, picking up snack for your advisory, setting up a meeting with a teacher – is very useful. These things are usually outside of the normal daily homework, but I find that writing them down prevents me from getting stressed out. Instead of feeling like you just have this jumbled cloud of “So! Much! Stuff!” to do during the week, make a list where you can actually see what you have to do and check things off one at a time. Also, when you feel your motivation level declining steeply, just look back at that list in all its highlighted-and-check-marked glory!
If you want to know how to organize your room, I suggest that you go watch Marie Kondo’s Netflix series “Tidying up with Marie Kondo.” My takeaway from the show was that everything needs a home, and if something doesn’t SPARK JOY IN YOU...
