I do personally admit, getting organized is not among the easiest, or most fun, aspects of my life. Nevertheless, it must be done! Life is hard, we all know this. It is especially difficult to remain sane when you have so much going on, whether it be school, work, involvement in sports/clubs, family, and social life. But, I wil tell you, it can be more simple if you put in the work to get organized. It may not seem like much at first, but I guarantee that it will help and decrease your stress level.
I don’t mean to be cliche and all, but I highly recommend that the first step to becoming organized is to get some calendars and planners! On a personal note, I had never been one to swear by planners since “I swear I’ll remember to do this by next week”, “I’ll remember we had this planed”, or the classic “I’m going to do my homework right when I get home anyway, I don’t have to write that down”. . . all the first stage to my “wow, I can’t believe I forgot to do this!”, “when did we plan to go out?”, and “what was I supposed to do for homework again?” I grew sick of these last minute stressors (thanks bad memory and laziness preventing me from writing reminders on a piece of paper!) and decided to try out the planner thing. IT WORKS.
My current situation, which I do recommend if you’re as forgetful as me, buy a planner for school to write in any assignments, exams, presentations, possible club priorities, and anything else that is school related. Then, buy an actual calendar of some sort (I own a whiteboard one, which is very handy) and hang in your room. On that calendar, write any social and/or work related information. Taking the time out of your day to physically write down important information is proven to help you retain it into your memory much easier, plus it’ll always be there to look back on. Therefore, it’s one less thing to worry about when you already know everything you’re supposed to do and the deadlines day-by-day.
Have you ever heard the phrase “clean space, clean mind”? If not, you’re reading about it now! As time-consuming as it is to clean your room, house, and work space, it must be done, especially if you’re trying to get work done. It will always be much more difficult to focus exactly on a task on-hand if you are in an unorganized, messy environment. So, clean your areas! Even if while cleaning you run into the problem of lack in space, there is always a way to find a home for something. Simply walking into holy-grail stores, such as Target, you can spot means of organization- containers, holders, racks, EVERYTHING that will come in handy when cleaning and storage purposes, within a couple of isles of the store. I guarantee you will be able to feel more relaxed, stress-free, and get more work done when you envelop yourself in a nice, clean space.
Lastly, your technology, social media, and other means of communication. You can organize technology and social media just as easily, or maybe the easiest. As for technology, re-vamp your settings, layouts, etc. to be organized in a manner that suits your aesthetic and that you feel decreases any anxiety, or just general scattered apps for example. Try arranging your apps into categories and labeling them such as “social media”, “entertainment”, “necessities”- anything you’d like. In terms of the “other means of communication”, I’m mainly referring to emails and it works perfectly if you have more than one main email. I recently discovered that you can customize and categorize your emails in order to keep mail informing you about similar stuff, emails from particular people, emails for classes and clubs, you have the option to group all those together!
Mainly, my point is, there are resources everywhere if you are trying to get organized and you 100% should! There are only positives when it comes to ditching our messy, disorganized, careless habits and there’s nothing you lose when you switch your path to tidiness! You will always have to put in that extra work to become and remain organized, but it will definitely help you, your habits, your mentality, and your stress-level, in the long run.