Life

Get­ting (and Stay­ing) Or­ga­nized Dur­ing Quar­an­tine

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At this point, you’ve prob­a­bly been home for about a week. You might be the kind of per­son who has man­aged to stay or­ga­nized through the in­san­ity of the past two weeks, through mov­ing, quar­an­tine, cam­pus clo­sures, and life changes, but for the ma­jor­ity of us, or­ga­ni­za­tion can be a strug­gle. If you’re sur­rounded by clut­ter, there are stud­ies that show it can neg­a­tively af­fect both your men­tal health, and your mood. Look around you right now. Is your bed­room clut­tered? Are you sur­rounded by things you don’t use and don’t need? Does your space “spark joy?” If it does­n’t, you might want to take some time and cre­ate a space with less anx­i­ety and more mind­ful­ness: a space that is both func­tional and beau­ti­ful. Does that sound im­pos­si­ble? Let’s talk about why it’s im­por­tant, and some sim­ple steps you can take to get and stay or­ga­nized.

Why De­clut­ter and Clean? 

There are many ben­e­fits to an or­ga­nized and de­clut­tered space. A thor­ough ar­ti­cle from Psy­chol­ogy To­day dis­cusses a myr­iad of the stud­ies done on the ef­fects of a messy home. One of these ef­fects is that work­ing in a clut­tered en­vi­ron­ment is proven to make it more dif­fi­cult to fo­cus on the task at hand. Maryville Stu­dent Macken­zie Steiner, a Speech Ther­apy ma­jor, agreed. “When­ever I start to feel stressed and over­whelmed with my work­load, I al­ways like to clean my room be­cause it gives me less to worry about. If I can or­ga­nize what I see around me, it makes it eas­ier to han­dle the var­i­ous things in my mind like due dates, pro­jects, and tests.” Mary Boser, a Com­mu­ni­ca­tions ma­jor, said “Be­ing or­ga­nized puts me in a bet­ter head­space to be pro­duc­tive. When I can eas­ily find what I need and don’t waste time look­ing for things, like files on my com­puter, it makes work­ing eas­ier.” 

A Game Plan 

So where do you start? If you’re over­whelmed by how much you have to do, start with these sim­ple steps to start to make a dif­fer­ence. The three steps to an or­ga­nized and clean space are Sort, Purge, and Or­ga­nize. 

1. Sort. 

Ash­ley from cre­ative­lyneat.com, a pop­u­lar or­ga­niz­ing and de­clut­ter­ing com­pany, uses this method with her clients: peo­ple like Gabby Hanna and Michelle Khare. In­stead of try­ing to or­ga­nize every­thing at once, sort by “sub-cat­e­gories” like Marie Kondo does on her Net­flix show, into cloth­ing, books, pa­pers, Komono (mis­cel­la­neous), and me­men­tos or sen­ti­men­tal items. By tak­ing on one kind of item at a time, it is eas­ier to de­clut­ter and clean ef­fec­tively.

2. Purge

This is the dif­fi­cult part for many of us. Get­ting rid of things is hard, es­pe­cially when we have had them a long while. In this stage, it is im­por­tant to keep things that we ac­tively use, and things that bring us joy. The Min­i­mal­ists have a sim­ple rule for get­ting rid of things that you don’t need: If you haven’t used it in 90 days, and if you won’t use it in the next 90 days, let it go. 

3. Or­ga­nize 

Once things are sorted and you’re able to let go of the things that no longer have a place in your life, then the fun starts! When or­ga­niz­ing, don’t worry about the aes­thet­ics of where things go, or try to make your space look like a Pin­ter­est board. What kind of sys­tem will work best for you? What is ac­tu­ally go­ing to add value to your life and make your space peace­ful? You get to choose! 

How to STAY Or­ga­nized. 

A com­mon prob­lem that many stu­dents have is stay­ing or­ga­nized. It can be easy to spend an en­tire af­ter­noon clean­ing, only to have the house be clut­tered and messy again within a week. Here are a few tips to stay or­ga­nized.

1. If it takes less than 5 min­utes, put it away im­me­di­ately. 

It takes 20-30 sec­onds to fold and put away a piece of cloth­ing. Maybe 1 minute to make your bed. Get in the habit of tak­ing the ex­tra minute to re­turn your space to tidy when­ever you have the chance. It’s a lot eas­ier to do this than to take 6 hours and an en­tire Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon to tidy your space! 

2. Start a sys­tem

Mess hap­pens, and that’s okay. If you’re over­whelmed with clut­ter and don’t have time to tidy right away, cre­ate a sys­tem to han­dle clut­ter quickly, and then come back to it. “I know I’m go­ing to be messy, so I have a des­ig­nated junk drawer,” Mary Boser says. “I can just toss things in the drawer to avoid feel­ing like my space is a mess, and then I’ll go and clean out the drawer when I have the time.” A drawer, a bas­ket or a bin by the door­way of your space, or even a closet would work. 

3. Func­tion Over Form.

When in the “or­ga­ni­za­tion” phase above, im­ple­ment an or­ga­ni­za­tion sys­tem that will best work for you. There are many vi­su­ally beau­ti­ful and “aes­thetic” sys­tems on In­sta­gram and Pin­ter­est, but if the sys­tem is not easy to use for you per­son­ally, you will not use it. Make each step as easy as pos­si­ble for your­self, and ex­per­i­ment with an or­ga­ni­za­tional sys­tem that will be easy for you to use. 

When your space is or­ga­nized and de­clut­tered, it can im­prove your men­tal health, your mood, and your pro­duc­tiv­ity. Hope­fully these sim­ple steps can help you dur­ing this time. For more re­sources, check out them­i­ni­mal­ists.com, cre­ative­lyneat.com, and the Net­flix se­ries, Tidy­ing Up with Marie Kondo. 

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