The “Organizationally Challenged” [Video 3/3, The Overhaul]

All right, finally we’re on to video three out of three on being challenged by organization. If you are a student who struggles with organization, or a parent whose child is challenged by organization, there are three main things you can do that will help you get organized.

First of all, the first one was, in video number one, to minimize—get rid of stuff, get down to the essentials, declutter. Okay, get everything cleaned up.

The second one is that for the things you do keep, you want to have homes for everything. Like this is a home for paper clips, okay? You want to have a very clearly labeled, simple home for stuff. Very simple, very easy to use. You need homes for things.

The third is the overhaul. People who are not naturally organized are not good at maintaining—I call them “maintainers” and “overhaulers.” Maintainers are people who maintain things very easily. They brush their teeth, they learn to brush their teeth young, and they get in the habit and it’s just done. They actually like making their bed; they maintain making their bed. They will do their own laundry at an early age. They maintain things.

Things don’t get out of hand: their desk doesn’t get out of hand, their backpack doesn’t get out of hand, their locker doesn’t get out of hand, their bedroom doesn’t get out of hand, the bathroom doesn’t look like an explosion happened. Everything doesn’t get out of hand because they’re maintainers. They’re constantly maintaining and refining, and they’re the type of people who put things away when they’re done with them. They don’t need to be reminded—they put their dishes in the sink after they’ve eaten, things like that.

But if you’re watching this video, you’re not a maintainer, you’re an overhauler. So if you’re a student who isn’t a maintainer, you’re an overhauler, which means that periodically you will go to town and completely redo your whole bedroom, or completely redo your backpack, or completely clean something—all your video games or this or that.

Generally speaking, you’re someone who likes to overhaul once in a while. The problem I see with the students I work with is they don’t overhaul regularly, and then things do get out of hand. Then they get behind on their homework, and they’re swimming upstream for the rest of the semester trying to catch up with grades. Their grades are not reflecting what they’re truly capable of, nor are they enjoying school as much as they should. This also affects other areas of life.

Either way, the point is you need to get into a weekly habit of overhauls. You need to overhaul certain things on a weekly basis, and you’ll be fine. Trust me on this.

The most important thing to overhaul is your school materials—your backpack. Generally speaking, what you’re going to want to do in a very easy way is every single Friday, throw everything into your backpack from your locker or your desk—everything that belongs to you from school—and just bring it home. Dump it all over the floor.

At first, it might take you a while to do the overhaul. As you do this on a weekly basis, it will eventually only take you five to ten minutes a week to maintain everything. What you’re going to do is pull everything out of the backpack—every single thing, every gum wrapper, every pencil shaving, everything. Go through it all, reorganize the papers, recycle everything you don’t need, throw away trash you don’t need.

When I’m doing overhauls with my students, I’ll find sandwiches in there, old drinks, crumbs of food, papers from months ago, and things that are just not important. So you want to do this overhaul and really do it on a weekly basis.

Make it a habit. Sunday night is my favorite time to do this because it helps you close out the previous week and prepare for the upcoming week. But every Sunday night—or whenever you want—do an overhaul for five or ten minutes. Pull everything out, go through all your papers, put them back in the right folders. Anything that needs to be done, put it in your queue or homework folder or planner. Write things in your planner, update your planner, cross off everything from the week before, and write in the assignments coming up in the upcoming week.

The overhaul is designed to be a maintenance-type thing. Since you’re not a maintainer, you need regular overhauls so that you are effectively maintaining.

Do a thorough check and make sure you’re not leaving any important business undone—homework you need to turn in, homework you need to do, whatever.

Anyhow, once you get those three things, you are well on your way to developing better habits with organization. You’re not going to be perfect, nor should you ever be perfect with organization. You will probably never look like a naturally organized person, and that doesn’t matter.

If you get in the habit of, first, eliminating the stuff you don’t need; second, creating homes for the things you do need and actually using those homes; and third, doing regular maintenance overhauls—you will be in really good shape.

I mentioned the overhaul for the backpack, but you can also overhaul your bedroom and clean it once a week, or do your laundry once a week, or organize other areas of your life—your art area, and whatever your things are. You will probably want to get into habits for those as well.

But at least if you start with a backpack overhaul once a week, you’re going to be in much better shape.

All right, get to it. Have an awesome week. I hope this helps you. I’ll see you soon.