When the mound on “The Chair” spreads to the end of your bed, the top of your lamp, your entire desk, and becomes the Red Sea of your floor except for that perfectly (painstakingly) carved path directly to your pillow, you may want to consider finding a new way to organize your life. But let’s be honest, how many of you read that and was like, “Yep. That’s me!” And continued to avoid both your homework and whatever poor organizational system you have now, and have successfully not used since high school? Me too, girl. As we speak I am surrounded by clutter from forgotten Post-It notes reminding me to do things I never did and clothes I discarded this morning (and the previous week) in attempts to look less like the beautiful mess I am today. I get it. Organization feels so good, but nothing gold can stay, and we all fall back into the clutter eventually.
I’m here to tell you that is okay. Honestly, I’ve lost more things during the journey to a clean room than I ever have in the creatively constructed mounds on my floor. I’m here to give you some tips to embrace the mess and even make it work to your advantage.
Let’s start with the backpack. It’s a blackhole of notes, assignments, and disclosures from semester’s past, and who knows how many pairs of headphones and pens are in there buried six feet under. A moment of silence for all of those that are truly lost and forgotten, and another to rejoice in the ones found here today. Clean them out. Take a half an hour to go through your backpack, and empty out the gum wrappers and stale snacks. Create three piles of the stuff in there: the recycle/throw away pile, store away pile (for old tests, flashcards, and billions of pens ect.), and the put back pile (including two or three pencils and pens). Once you’ve done that, shovel all the necessary things back in there. The best part about this process is none of your habits of shoving stuff in there and forgetting them have to end. Just repeat the process every month, term, or semester. Do it often enough, and you’ll spend less and less time going through everything.
Next, the desk. This one is hard even for me, but it is similar to the backpack; you just have to take the time to organize every month or so. On the bright side, this gives you the opportunity to decorate and personalize your desk each time. I always spend more time curating a beautiful array of my keepsakes than I do organizing anything else, so do it. Create your dream desk complete with an updated calendar and shelf of books no one will know if your read or not. Create artsy piles and utilize your shelves to stay organized. It is worth it so when you actually sit down to binge Netflix –I mean do your homework! –you can focus. Don’t worry. I am sure you will find another way to distract yourself.
Time for shoes! If you are always running late, but love to accessorize with the perfect pair of shoes like me, then I know you have a deep pile of shoes at the bottom of your closet and by the front door. A quick way to clean up the clutter is to place a decorative basket by the door to put your shoes in when you get home. Pro tip: always make sure to carry the ones you wear less frequently back to your closet where a shoe rack or shoe cubby is waiting. Having a shoe rack has saved my life and loads of time! They keep your shoes together and tucked away in a satisfying fashion. Another tip is to buy a couple of pool noodles and cut them to fit inside your tall boots so they do not flop over and crease when you store them, so you can hit sweater season in style!
Makeup! Treat yourself like your favorite makeup guru, and organize your brushes and makeup products accordingly. My favorite tip for this is filling a bowl with decorative rocks and sticking your brushes and eyeliners upright in it. Not only is this super cute, but also a great way to save time and salvage your organization skills in the mornings when you spent a little to much time doing your makeup.This keeps you from losing your favorite crease brush in the crease of your comfy makeup chair. Another tip is to tuck them away decorative boxes to organize your pallets and less used products. It is up to you how you fill them, but it keeps your products safe and all together until a glorious night out with the girls. Or display them proudly in clear makeup organizers with slots for your lipsticks and foundations.
Finally, The Chair. Start by getting over-the-door hooks. There, you can hang your purses and jackets with ease, but that is not really the problem, is it? The real issue is the mounds of both clean and admittedly dirty swaths of clothes you discarded in attempts to find the right outfit on your way out, and leaving it for weeks only to finally riffle through it when you are looking for your favorite sweater at the bottom of the pile. No matter how I try, I can never be rid of the pile and I embrace that everyday when I add to it. The greatest tip I have is to put your clean clothes away as immediately as you can on laundry day. This means going through the pile every laundry day, and putting away the clothes you didn’t even wear alongside the ones you just washed. Getting into this habit is very difficult, but it becomes easier, I promise.
These tips may be hard to integrate into your already existing messy organization when you believe that this organizational style has worked for you. I know, because it works for me, but living in a dorm has forced me to keep a more inhabitable living area. But I promise, I would never suggest a tip I do not use regularly, and one that does not already fit with my bad habits. Like I said, I am currently surrounded by my clutter, but it is so much less than I have lived and worked on top of before. I feel better. I am less stressed. And I even sleep better now that I have found a way to embrace the mess with small moderations to my style. I have even managed to keep my plants alive and happy. I hope all of these things for you as well. We are all an elaborate, crazy, inspirational mess. Your space reflects that, so enjoy it and let it evolve and adapt with you as you move through your journey. Spend the time to silence your mind and find comfort in organization for a minute. Life moves so fast and it is hard to keep up. You are doing fine and your best –and the mess—is always enough because the biggest part of embracing the mess is embracing the times you couldn’t or didn’t want to stay organized or on track; it is embracing the human, beautiful parts of yourself and your journey.