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Im unorganized. Do you have any ways of helping me organize my room?
I can never find anything in my room! I have dance the day after and I can't find my dance clothes and I swear I saw them in my drawer! Sometimes, I even lose my homework when I could've sworn I put on my desk! My parents keep getting mad at me, telling me to be more organized and all but I can never find the time to do so and my room is such a mess now that I'm afraid it's too late to turn back. Do you have any ways of helping me tidy my room? Or perhaps about not losing everything all the time?? I try, I really try to put things in their places but for some reason, I can never find them again! I never even touched my dance clothes, they were sitting in their typical place in my drawer but now I can't find them... Any help about this would be greatly appreciated!!
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Want to answer more questions in the Domesticity category?
Maybe give some free advice about: Cleaning?
If you're sure the outfit is in your room then thats good. I am not expecting you to do a full out organizing as of yet, just at this point a basic sorting.
Get boxes, one into which go all clothing, a laundry basket or box for dirty clothes, a box for any paper type stuff,( loose papers, calendar, books, notepad, magazines), a box for toys and games, a box for personal items (jewelry, hair decor, perfume, nail polish, skin creams) and a trash basket or bag to toss away any trash items you discover in your room (empty pop cans, candy wrappers, chips bag etc...)
Two things leave your room immediately, the trash and dirty clothes going to the washer.
The key when you start sorting is to not overlook any area of the room. Look under the bed. If there's an unused bunk bed as was the case for my daughter, the upper bunk held a lot of her junk, on the closet floor, open each drawer and empty them totally as all items go into the sorting boxes. You can leave hanging clothes in closet but will want to go slowly thru each to see if your dance outfit might be sharing a hanger with another outfit that is more visible hiding the other. Go thru the box of clothes looking for it, you will find it.
Next, decide what you have in excess and focus on that next as that will bring on some instant success and pride and help you feel you're accomplishing something. Maybe you have more shoes than the closet can hold or they're in a pile or where ever you left them throughout the house. For my daughters, stuffed toys was what each had in excess even as teens. We bought each a toy hammock to hang in their rooms where all the stuffed toys went except the ones chosen to grace their bed that week. If you are just overflowing in personal care stuff, decide if some can be kept in your own plastic bin in the bathroom somewhere, under the sink or on the counter or whether you'd prefer keeping in your room. A good rule is to go UP /verticle when trying to organize.
Some organizing things can be found at dollar stores, like the stacking organizing plastic bins which work great if one is for hair stuff, another for perfumes and creams, another for nail polish if you have like 12 or so bottles for example. Stack these on top of a dresser. There is easy metal shelving for the wall where metal tracks run vertical, with L shaped brackets that fit into it at any point you want and then shelves are laid over it. Its simple for Dad to install if that would help you if you're short on space.
Another thing to do is focus one day just on clothes. First weed out stuff that no longer fits to go to a sibling or to a box for donations. Now look at whats left and decide how often you wear any of the things you have. If you can't remember the last time you wore an item recently or its been months, then you don't use it enough to justify it taking up space. I do this about every 2 years myself. I am always picking up something on sale I think is cute and then realize I have very little that goes with it. So a top may be worn twice all summer and thats not enough, no matter how cheap it was or how cute it is to take up space in the closet. I know its hard but clothes not worn often enough must go. Of your remaining clothes, depending on the current season whether spring/summer or fall/winter, like for now, all summer clothes for hot weather goes into a bin made for fitting under the bed and has wheels so you can pull it out just in case you do need a piece from there...but the key here is that only your fall and winter clothing will be currently in your drawers and hanging in the closet. This helps greatly in organizing ones bedroom. You can find an under the bed rolling storage bin for fairly inexpensive. The parents need to help out with this of course in purchasing it but may not be prompted to buy it until they see you serious about organizing by pulling out what no longer fits, and a bag of clothes to donate.
There are stores dedicated to selling nothing but containers and organizing aids even down to desk drawer inserts, trays with compartments so all pens go in one, paper clips and stapler in another, and so on.
Of all your original sorted out boxes, just focus on one thing at a time. If you try to organize your whole room at once, it will be too overwhelming. So focus on just clothes until it is fully organized before pulling personal items out of their box and trying to organize them.
And for small stuff, if you have any shoe boxes with lids hanging around the house, wrap the lid and bottom separately with some wrapping paper, and store all your hair stuff in one, nail polish in another, odds and ends memorabilia in another.
You can purchase small hanging closet shelving that hangs from the bar or basket type shelving with netting stacked storage that hangs from a plant hook on the ceiling to place some of your shoe box treasures or even folded clothes, or toys. You may have to do this all a little at a time depending on whether the parents can afford a few extra dollars to help purchase some organizing things for your room.
Good luck dear. If you end up with anything in particular you need more ideas for, let me know.
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I should say the first step is to have a really good sort out of your room, just for the sake of it...not a frantic search when you're actually in urgent need of something. That's when we open drawers and cupboards, rifle through stuff, then shove it some place, any place. And that's when any remote semblance of order gets lost completely. So the next search is even more hopeless. Is there some stuff you could get rid of completely? Get rid of it. How about stuff you hardly ever use or look at? Maybe that could be packed in cartons and shunted to a spare room or loft/attic? You've still got it, if needed, but it's not adding to the general clutter in your room. Make particular storage spaces specifically for certain items. A dance clothes drawer is an obvious starting place. If the drawer is hardly filled with them why not partition it? Put other stuff pertaining to your dance activities in it too. Like books, mags, photo's...etc. maybe organise wardrobe etc into what you wear it for. School gear, causual day time clothes, smart daytime clothes, best outfits for special occasions. School assignment work might respond well to three trays like the office-method of In-Pending-Out trays. IN is stuff you haven't started yet but have to do. OUT is stuff completed and ready to hand in. PENDING is the stuff you're working on right now, started but not yet finished. Stuff you use every day or thereabouts should be easily reached. There's no use storing occasionally used stuff on top of or in front of the regularly used stuff. You'll keep needlessly moving the occasioanl to get at the regular. Now, home and hardware stores have lots of organising-type stuff. Have a look around and if you seel some things that you think "That would be perfect/just the right size for my....(whatever)" make a note of them. And see if you can persuade your parents to fund your new organising essentials. Once you've got the system set-up, work hard and force yourself to return things to their places. After a time it becomes set in your mind, kind of automatic, or 'second-nature'. Labelling storage items is good too. You don't tip out the box wondering what's in it! And shoving things in a drawer which is 'marked' (either physially, with a label or just marked 'in your mind') for something which clearly doesn't match the label will feel 'all wrong' and hopefully make you think again and find it's proper place? I tend to be pretty disorganised (chatoic even!) myself. I have to fight the belief that I will magically remember where I put something, and recall the item and location on demand, as and whenever needed. The belief is mere wishful thinking, and usually fails dismally! When I see you say "I could have sworn I put it....." I think we might have a lot in common mate!!
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