Over the years I’ve taken great pride in my ability to stay organized as a student, parent, even professional. The ability to remain organized will also have many benefits like employment opportunities, relieving stress and boosting energy. Methods of organization include decluttering, categorizing and keeping a routine. You can categorize by name, color, style, brand, even seasons. Not being organized can cause you to misplace things easily, feeling overwhelmed, even causing a mess.

The beginning steps to learning how to stay organized is learning when to declutter. Decluttering is accomplished by throwing extra items you have away in the garbage or storing them in bins. When decluttering, things can get overwhelming once you notice how much stress disorganization has caused you.

Being sure to have a system to declutter is important. For example, create a pile for storage items, trash items, lastly items you can possibly sell. Decluttering allows you to know what you have too much or too little of.

Next you can categorize your items, which creates fast and easy access to your items. Knowing where everything is and exactly where to put it back eliminates the issues of any items cluttering again. When categorizing things be sure to choose categorizes you feel work best for you. For example, I categorized my closet by season so winter would be sweaters, long sleeves, short sleeves then, sweatpants and jeans. Then if you want to go an extra step you can break it into colors. This was also a highly used method I learned through my retail experience.

Finally, the most important step of this process is to maintain a routine to stay organized. This will always work if you refer to the first steps you took. Place items back where you took them from, don’t overstock, most importantly throw them away! Labeling things has always worked for me as visually seeing where it belongs makes it easier to put it back. Understanding which method you prefer to use when organizing will save time when going back to look for something.

Ultimately, understanding organization has come with many years of experience in different settings. Whether in retail, customer service, or as an overall human, it is skill set most should learn.

Organization is important as a student, being able to have organized notes for each chapter, class, even subject. So, if being organized is something you have a hard time getting started, just refer to these steps that I’ve learned over the years.