Welcome back everyone!

At the start of a new year, it’s always nice to do some cleaning. I find it makes me feel like I have my life together and am prepared for the year ahead. However, if you’re already a pretty organized person or just don’t have the time to do a major deep cleaning of your room/house, here are a few little ways you can organize your life and feel like you have it all figured out (even if you totally don’t).

1. Organize any surfaces in your room – This sounds like a lot at first, but you probably don’t have that many surfaces where things are out in your room. For me, I have my nightstand, my bookshelf, my desk, and my bathroom counter. Your room will look so much neater if you just clean off these few surfaces and minimize the amount of stuff you have on top of them. Put things back that have been left out on these areas (put things into drawers, etc), dust them or wipe them down, and organize them.
2. Choose some sort of planning system that works for you – Whether this is a physical planner, Google Calendar, the Apple calendar app, or some other system, find what works best for you. Having a record of all your plans and responsibilities is super helpful, especially for remembering everything that’s on your plate. For us students especially, it’s an easy way to monitor all your schoolwork.
3. Go through papers – This sounds vague, but I mean exactly what I wrote: go through all your papers. Old receipts, manuals of electronics, schoolwork from past semesters or even past years, random paperwork, flyers, mail- recycle everything you don’t want and don’t need anymore, and organize what you still want/need in some sort of file folder system. I have a few different folders- I have a huge accordion one for all my current year school stuff so I can keep it and study for finals, I have a smaller folder with important school stuff I still reference from past years (notes from math and Spanish, etc), and a folder with all my extracurricular stuff and/or extra school information.
4. Do a technology clean-out – I’m going to make a post on this very soon detailing how to do this most efficiently, but get old stuff and apps that you don’t want off of your phones! This is helpful especially if you don’t have a lot of storage. I’m going to leave it at this since I’ll go into detail in another post, but basically just delete stuff you don’t want off of your electronics.
5. Clean out backpacks and purses – This is a really good idea for your school bag before the new semester, but it’s also nice to clean out any other purses or bags you may use. Check all the pockets, take everything out, and dump them out upside down once empty over a trash can to get rid of crumbs and other trash. You may find things you’d lost a while ago, like your old favorite chapstick.

I hope this inspired you to go do some cleaning. Trust me, you’ll feel so much better once you see the fruits of your labor! I’m an organization-lover and I’m trying to up my game this year, so you’ll definitely be seeing more posts about cleaning and organization soon.

-Brooke