Have you ever had the feeling that there was something you had to do but you couldn’t quite put your finger on it?
Whenever you put a project away in a drawer or cupboard, there’s a good chance you’ll forget about it. In short, closed storage/filing systems don’t work for everyone, especially students with ADHD. It’s best to avoid them.
As Abigail Levrini and Frances Prevatt, authors of the brilliant book Succeeding with Adult ADHD, state:
“Because of distractability and forgetfulness, people with ADHD struggle with keeping track of anything that doesn’t jump out at them visually.”
So what’s the alternative?
Keep things in sight and in mind.
Use open storage systems (e.g., open bookshelves or pigeonhole units) and/or clear containers with labels. This way you can easily keep track of all your projects.
Why do open storage systems and clear containers works so well?
Here are five reasons:
1. In one glance, you can see everything you need to do.
2. All of your projects are located in one spot (you can save time not having to run around the house searching for things).
3. You feel more organised and in control of what you need to do each day.
4. There are less barriers to getting started (you pick up a project and away you go).
5. When you’ve finished working on a project, you can put it away so it doesn’t clutter up your study space.
Below is one example of an open storage system:
It’s a pigeonhole unit. It’s nothing fancy but it does the job at storing various projects. The most important projects are located at the top and the least important at the bottom.
Alternatively, you can use simple boxes. In her book, The Creative Habit, dance choreographer Twyla Tharp writes about how she assigns each project to a different box. She states:
“Everyone has his or her own organizational system. Mine is a box, the kind you can buy at Office Depot for transferring files. I start every dance with a box. I write the project name on the box, and as the piece progresses I fill it up with every item that went into the making of the dance. This means notebooks, news clippings, CDs, videotapes of me working alone in my studio, videos of the dancers rehearsing, books and photographs and pieces of art that may have inspired me.”
She goes onto state:
“There are separate boxes for everything I’ve ever done. If you want a glimpse into how I think and work, you could do worse than to start with my boxes.
The box makes me feel organized, that I have my act together even when I don’t know where I’m going yet.
It also represents a commitment. The simple act of writing a project name on the box means I’ve started work.
The box makes me feel connected to a project. It is my soil. I feel this even when I’ve back-burnered a project: I may have put the box away on a shelf, but I know it’s there. The project name on the box in bold black lettering is a constant reminder that I had an idea once and may come back to it very soon.
Most important, though, the box means I never have to worry about forgetting. One of the biggest fears for a creative person is that some brilliant idea will get lost because you didn’t write it down and put it in a safe place. I don’t worry about that because I know where to find it. It’s all in the box…
They’re easy to buy, and they’re cheap…They’re one hundred percent functional; they do exactly what I want them to do: hold stuff. I can write on them to identify their contents… I can move them around… When one box fills up, I can easily unfold and construct another. And when I’m done with the box, I can ship it away out of sight, out of mind, so I can move on to the next project, the next box.”
Where should you put your open storage system?
It’s a good idea to locate your open storage system outside your study space but still close by. If you can see all your projects while you’re working on a particular project, it can lead to life paralysis. You get overwhelmed. And nothing gets done.
But if all your projects (except the one you’re currently working on) are located just out of sight, you can give the current project the full attention it deserves. You can say to yourself, “For the next 25 minutes, this is all my mind needs to focus on”.
Once you’ve finished working on the project for the day, you can file it away and pick up another project easily.
Should you choose clear containers, an open bookshelf or a pigeonhole unit for your open storage system?
This comes down to personal preference and what you think will work best for you.
I considered buying 15 – 20 big boxes from the Reject Shop at $5 a pop. But ultimately decided I would get a lot more mileage out of a pigeonhole. (It also takes up far less space and makes me feel less like someone who would feature on the show Hoarder Next Door.)
Whether you go for clear containers, an open bookshelf or a pigeonhole unit like I have, it doesn’t really matter. What matters most is that all your projects are in one place, you can capture and store items and bits of information for each project, and you can efficiently access what you need.
How do you manage all your schoolwork, projects and assignments? Do you think an open-storage system could work for you?
Share This:
I was the kid who was always late for school. I’d forget things. I’d lose my stuff. I’d regularly have to check the grimy lost property bin.
When I was younger, I admired people who were organised. Seeing someone with colour-coded files, a neatly arranged bag, and a tidy bedroom was inspiring.
I figured I was just wired differently. Being messy was just how I was—a simple fact of life. My boyfriend (now my husband) even affectionately nicknamed me Mess Pot.
It never dawned on me that perhaps these ‘organised’ people I was so in awe of had been exposed to other organised people and practices from a young age.
It wasn’t until I was in my early twenties that the penny finally dropped.
Here’s what I realised . . .
No one pops out of the womb knowing how to be organised.
If you know how to learn, you can learn how to become organised. It’s not rocket science.
So, that’s exactly what I did.
Over the past 15 years, I’ve taught myself to be organised.
I’ve read many books on the topic, from Marie Kondo’s bestseller The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up to David Allen’s Getting Things Done.
I’ve experimented with numerous organisational methods, systems and strategies that the authors promised would transform my life from chaos to freedom, control, and ease.
In this article, I share what I’ve learnt from all these books, organisational gurus, and personal experiments I’ve conducted to become organised. I hope this inspires you to develop your own systems and strategies that work for you.
You can follow other people’s systems and methods, but I’ve discovered that it’s best to develop your own organisational system. The organisational system you adopt must align with your values and goals. If it doesn’t, abandon it or tweak it until it feels right for you.
For instance, I love books, and I own many. This is why I yelped out in pain when I read Marie Kondo’s advice on how to deal with books.
In her book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Kondo advises readers to rip out relevant pages from reference books and discard the rest of the book. There was simply no way I would do that to my precious books!
Central to her KonMari method is holding an object in both hands and feeling the emotion that arises.
If the object sparks joy? You keep it.
If there is no joy? You get rid of it.
I can see how this strategy has enormous appeal. It simplifies the decluttering process. You don’t have to think too hard. But there are dangers in the spark joy approach.
You can end up on a consumer treadmill of discarding items that no longer spark joy and constantly acquiring new ones that do. However, you can bet that the joy will soon dissipate from those new items as you habituate to them.
In addition, this ‘Spark Joy’ strategy also overlooks the functional role of many items in our lives.
My toilet plunger doesn’t exactly spark joy, but it’s incredibly useful when I need it!
The point is you need to trust yourself. Don’t give all your power away to a stylish organisational guru with a cult following and a Netflix series!
Trial and error is the key to getting your organisational groove on. And patience.
Your life won’t be transformed in a day or a week. You have to trust that the solutions will come, but it will take time.
This may sound a bit woo-woo and new age. So, let me frame it another way . . .
On your journey to become organised, pretend to be a scientist. Run some personal experiments.
In the book Tiny Experiments, Anne-Laure Le Cunff encourages us to come up with a research question and then turn it into a hypothesis. She states:
“Don’t overthink it. Formulating a hypothesis is an intuitive process based on your past experiences and present inclinations. It should simply be an idea you want to put to the test- an inkling of an answer to your research question.
If you observed that you dread giving presentations, maybe improv classes could help build your confidence. If you feel anxious in the morning, maybe meditation could help regulate your emotions. If you enjoy graphic design, maybe freelancing could help strengthen your portfolio.”
Don’t be put off by this scientific language (e.g., ‘Hypothesis’ and ‘research question’). Running a tiny experiment and formulating a hypothesis is easy.
Here’s an example from my own life . . .
I’ve noticed that when clutter piles up on my desk, I am more easily distracted and feel overwhelmed. So, I came up with the following research question:
“How can I decrease feelings of overwhelm and increase my ability to focus when I’m at my desk?”
My hypothesis to this question was:
“Decluttering my desk by removing all non-essential items will decrease feelings of overwhelm and increase my ability to focus on the task at hand.”
Then, I put this idea to the test and observed what happened.
Some experiments you run will work. Others will flop, but that’s okay. The point is you won’t know unless you run some tiny experiments.
As Anne-Laure Le Cunff states:
“Once you have a hypothesis, you can design an experiment and turn your life into a giant laboratory for self-discovery.”
Through running tiny experiments, I’ve come to realise that being organised isn’t about having a beautifully colour-coordinated filing system or a nicely decorated home.
It’s also not about following 10 simple steps and waking up one day to find that you’ve magically become an organised person.
In our materialistic culture, we are sold a particular idea and image of what it means to be organised. But I’m not buying it. And you shouldn’t either. Why? Because it’s a lie designed to make us feel bad about ourselves, so we buy more stuff!
In stark contrast to the slick images you see online and in glossy magazines, life is messy. It’s a constant struggle.
Purchasing pretty storage containers and having a tidy, organised home won’t make your life less messy and uncertain.
But I can say this: being organised will make it easier to navigate the mess and chaos of life. It will help you focus your time, energy, and attention on what matters most to you.
So, I’m suggesting that you block the influencers and ads from your feed and burn the home lifestyle magazines. You’re going to create your own personal philosophy for organised living.
Being organised is about helping my day go a little more smoothly.
It’s about removing friction and resistance between me and the tasks I need to do. When I’m organised I can easily find what I need, which allows me to dive into my projects: filming that video, cooking that new recipe for dinner, and mind mapping that book I’ve just read.
Being organised is a way to enjoy the present moment more. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by mess and clutter, I feel calm and grounded. It’s easier to focus on the task at hand.
Is it worth taking the time to become more organised and experiment with your own systems and strategies?
Yes. 100%.
Being organised has decreased my stress levels and boosted my confidence. It has also saved me a significant amount of time and energy.
I’ve found that developing a few guiding principles helps ground you in your quest to become organised.
Below, I share my guiding principles and how I’ve integrated each one into my life.
I’m not here to tell you to copy what I do (it’s best to develop your own philosophy, guiding principles, systems, and strategies). However, if you’re unsure where to start, feel free to experiment with the systems and strategies listed below.
Give every item a home. Everything should have a special place in your space.
Professional chefs do this. Before they start cooking a dish, they prepare the ingredients and take out the kitchen utensils they need. There’s a term for this practice. It’s called the mise en place.
Mise en place is a French term that literally translates to ‘putting in place’, but it means a place for everything and everything in its place.
When it comes time for a chef to start cooking a dish, they know where the ingredients and kitchen utensils are. This allows the chef to work efficiently and focus on the task at hand: cooking the dish.
In the book Work Clean, Dan Charnas explains how this concept can be applied outside the kitchen to our everyday lives.
Charnas encourages us to arrange our spaces to remove resistance. He states:
“The less friction we have in our work, the easier it is to do, the more we can do, and the quicker we can do it; and thus the more physical and mental energies we can preserve for other things.”
Mise en place changed my life for the better. I used to spend a lot of physical and mental energy trying to find my keys, wallet, etc., but not anymore.
I now have a designated spot for my keys, hat, wallet, and bag. After using these items, I return them to their special place.
With the mise en place, I no longer waste time searching for items. I can quickly and easily find what I need. You can read more about how I apply mise en place to my life here.
If something is important, I can’t have it stuffed away in a cupboard, drawer, or file. If it’s hidden away, it doesn’t exist.
This is why you’ll see vertical wall hangers in most rooms of my house. These hangers contain key items I frequently use in the space.
By having one item per pouch, I can easily find what I need when I need it.
I get easily overwhelmed by piles of stuff, so I have to be vigilant and stay on top of the mess.
I have a simple trick for keeping my space relatively tidy. I tell myself:
“All I need to do is put away three things. That’s it!”
The sink is overflowing with dishes? I tell myself, “Just do three dishes!”
Laundry is scattered all over the bed? “Just put away three pieces of clothing!”
The kitchen bench is covered in random stuff? “Put away three spices!”
Putting away three items feels easy. And when something feels easy, I’m more likely to get started.
When everything has its special place (see Principle #1: Embrace mise en place), it’s easy to implement this principle.
There’s nothing more frustrating than having a brilliant idea and having no way to capture it. You need to be able to catch thoughts as they occur.
This is why I have whiteboards, markers, pads of paper, and pens placed in key locations.
These random ideas that I capture get thrown into my in-tray to process later on.
Distractions keep you from doing what you need to do. Like a pile of clutter on your desk or boxes obstructing your entryway, distractions are a barrier to your goals and intentions.
If you want to be more organised, you need to deal with anything that could distract you before sitting down to do your work.
Like most people, the biggest distraction I face is my phone.
If I’m constantly checking my phone, I feel scattered, frenzied, and overwhelmed. Everything speeds up. I start to feel like I’m spinning out of control.
I know I have to avoid this mental state at all costs if I want to have any chance of having a productive, enjoyable day.
This is why I have a morning ritual of placing my phone in pocket 1 of my vertical wall hanger in my dining room (well away from my workspace) before I start my workday. Out of sight is out of mind.
I used to feel intimidated by the idea of planning, so I rarely planned my week or day.
But over the past few years, I’ve become a planning machine. Why? Because plans are powerful. Even rubbish plans work wonders!
As Ned Brockman says, plans “help make you less anxious about the howling chaos of modern life.”
Here’s how I create my ‘rubbish’ plans for the week and day:
At the end of every week (on a Sunday), I create a plan for the week ahead.
I do this by reflecting on the week I’ve just had (What did I do this week? Can I claim any wins? Are there any unfinished tasks or people I need to get back to?) and looking at the week ahead (What do I need to do this week?).
I write out all the major to-dos for the next seven days on a list.
This list usually overwhelms me (there’s always a lot to do!). To combat this feeling of overwhelm, I transfer a few tasks from the list to an index card. This is my daily card (the to-do list for the day).
As I complete each task, I mark it off my daily card. As I see more items being marked off, it builds positive momentum and a sense of progress and satisfaction.
I use a paper-based planner and a massive year-in-a-glance calendar to help me keep track of my commitments.
When I can see how many days I have before an important presentation or my next holiday, I feel calmer and more in control.
Using planners also frees up precious mental space for learning as you’re not trying to hold so much information in your working memory.
I’m far from being a minimalist. I love my stuff. But having too much can be overwhelming. More stuff means more things to manage, making it harder to stay organised.
As someone who loves to op-shop, I frequently have to remind myself of the following quote by William Morriss:
“Have nothing in your house which you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
Every few months, I’ll collect some items to donate to my local op-shop. Reducing my possessions makes cleaning and organising a lot easier and quicker.
It’s important to remember why you are striving to be organised in the first place. It’s not to impress other people. You are doing this for you.
Being organised helps you pursue your goals and live in accordance with your values. You have to keep your goals front and centre of your mind; otherwise, the goal of being organised can dominate your life. Organising can become a form of procrastination.
This is why I keep coming back to my values and goals (which I have captured on a mind map). This reminds me that being organised helps me to live a good life. But it’s not the point of my life. There are more important things I want to do with my time, energy and attention.
That said, it’s hard to focus on and work towards my goals if I’m completely disorganised. I lose sight of them! You need to find a healthy balance.
If you want to be more organised, I encourage you to experiment with developing systems and strategies that work for you. Come up with an organisational philosophy and set of guiding principles that align with your values.
Why not treat your life as a laboratory and run some tiny experiments to become organised?
Through trial and error, you’ll discover what works and what doesn’t.
Remember, this isn’t about having a perfectly decorated home or trying to impress others. The point of being organised is to allow you to do the things you want to do without as much friction. It’s about living a good life.
I love the feeling.
I think, “Go me! Look at you go!” as I strike the pen through the list item.
But as good as it feels to cross things off, it’s not really about that. That’s not where the power of lists resides.
The power exists in making the list in the first place. Getting the thoughts out of your head and down on paper.
In his book Keep going: 10 ways to stay creative in good times and bad Austin Kleon states:
“Lists bring order to the chaotic universe. I love making lists. Whenever I need to figure out my life, I make a list. A list gets all your ideas out of your head and clears the mental space so you’re actually able to do something about them.
When I’m overwhelmed, I fall back on the old-fashioned to-do list. I make a big list of everything that needs to get done, I pick the most pressing thing to do, and I do it. Then I cross it off the list and pick another thing to do. Repeat.”
When I’m feeling really under the pump, I’ll go for a walk and scribble out a list while I’m walking.
I’m not sure which activity helps me more – the walking or the list making – but by the time I arrive home from my walk, I always feel less anxious and more in control.
If you haven’t been having much luck with to-do lists, you may have fallen into one of the following common traps:
If you look at your list and it says says things like ‘Mum’s birthday’ or ‘Study’, it’s time to make these list items crispy.
Crispy is a Behaviour Design term created by Stanford university Professor BJ Fogg. When you make a behaviour crispy, you get really clear on the specific behaviour you need to carry out.
Here are some examples I came up with to illustrate the difference between fuzzy and crispy list items:
Fuzzy to-do list item: Mum’s birthday
Crispy to-do list item: Call mum to wish her happy birthday after lunchFuzzy to-do list item: Study
Crispy to-do list item: Open Quizlet study deck and test myself for 5 minutes on the bus
When you ‘crispify’ a list item, you tighten it up. You make it crystal clear for your brain what you need to do next. This in turn makes it much easier for you to get started.
If your list is no longer working for you, feel free to abandon it and create a new one. As Psychiatrist Douglas Puryear says in his book Your life can be better:
“I make lists over and over, all day long. It’s not just about having the list; there is also benefit in making them. Writing down what I need to do is somehow calming and organizing, and therefore motivating. When I write things down, it’s as though I’m on top of them.”
Our brains get bored easily, so try making your list a little bit different every now and then.
Here are some simple ideas on how you can jazz up your next to-do list:
It doesn’t matter what medium or what materials you use to create your to-do list. What matters is that you get everything out of your head and you make each list item crispy.
If your to-do list is causing you to have a mini meltdown, back up. Ask yourself . . .
“Is this list too long? Can I cross a few things off?”
Create a short list from your big list – just three items (post-it notes are good for this). Then put away your long list. When you’ve completed those three items, create a new list of three from your long list.
During times of chaos, lists are your friends. Reach out and use this fabulous tool to lighten your mental load. You don’t need any special skills or talent to do this. Lists are for everyone.
It certainly can be.
If you’re spending hours of your day, dusting, picking up bits of fluff off the carpet and scrubbing floors, then yes. You’ve got a bad case of procrastacleaning.
Put simply, you’re avoiding living.
As professor (and expert on procrastination) Tim Pychyl says:
“Procrastination is an existential issue of not getting on with life itself”.
When I was at university, I had a friend whose parents were hardcore house cleaners. They spent a huge amount of their time cleaning.
Their house had a distinct chemical smell: Pine O Cleen.
Like a hospital surgery room, everything was so neat. So immaculate. So sterile.
The backyard was the same: brick paving as far as the eye could see. No trees. No flowers. No birds. No life.
One day, out of the blue, I received a phone call from my friend. She was really upset. She had just received the terrible news that her mum had late stage cancer.
I remember my friend saying things like, “Mum isn’t ready to die”, “There’s all these things mum still wants to do” and “Mum wanted to go travelling . . . ”. But her mum was now too sick to do anything or go anywhere. She’d missed her chance.
Not long after that phone call, I became friends with a Bohemian family. And oh boy, did they know how to live!
I would go over to this family’s house and we’d do things like pick olives in our muddy gumboots, trample back into the house and sip on cups of tea surrounded by piles of books, academic papers and trinkets gathered from various adventures.
In this Bohemian household, no one cared about mud on the floor or decluttering. What mattered most were projects, ideas, relationships and good food!
So I decided cleaning and organising was a waste of time. I embraced a life of mess and clutter.
It’s fun being a slob up to a point. But then life becomes really hard work. Much too hard for a slob to handle. For example:
• You waste time running around the house looking for things (e.g. your car keys and assignment sheets)
• You buy things you don’t need (you forgot you already have the item or something similar)
• You feel mentally chaotic being surrounded by piles of work and clutter
• It’s much harder to focus on one thing at a time
• You lose track of all the things you need to do
• You feel like you don’t have enough time to do everything (because you don’t have a clear mental picture of what needs to be done)
I soon realised I had to strike a balance between the hardcore cleaners and the Bohemian family. When I started working on my PhD, I knew it was time to break my slobby, pack rat habits and get organised to complete this big project.
I didn’t want to spend hours of my precious life energy cleaning. And as a poor student, I didn’t have the money to hire a cleaner.
So I embraced the power of The Tiny Tidy.
A Tiny Tidy is an intense three-minute tidy-up session. It delivers quick results and leaves you feeling more optimistic about your life.
In his excellent book Tiny Habits BJ Fogg explains how to execute the strategy as follow:
“Go to the messiest room in your house (or the worst corner of your office), set a timer for three minutes, and tidy up. After every errant paper you throw away, celebrate. After every toy you toss back into its cubbyhole – you get the idea. Say, “Good for me!” and “Wow. That looks much better.” And do a fist pump. Or whatever works for you. Celebrate each tiny success even if you don’t feel it authentically, because as soon as that timer goes off, I want you to stop and tune into what you are feeling.
I predict that your mood will be lighter … You will be more optimistic about your day and your tasks ahead. You may be surprised at how quickly you’ve shifted your perspective. I guarantee that you will look around and feel a sense of success. You’ll see that you made your life better in just three minutes.”
The celebration part of the Tiny Tidy is essential. Don’t bypass it. Every item you deal with must be followed with a “Woohoo!”, fist pump or celebratory dance move. This is what helps wire in the new habit of doing the Tiny Tidy sessions.
I have found doing a Tiny Tidy session once a day keeps chaos at bay. As Marian Petre and Gordon Rugg state in the The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research:
“Tidying and filing, if you do them in manageable doses can be very soothing activities and can give you a feeling of control.”
Life is short and there’s lots of stuff to do and explore. Who wants to spend all their time cleaning?
Famous artist Margaret Olley was well known for her cluttered, messy house. And she had a great philosophy when it came to cleaning. She said:
“I’ve never liked housework. I get by doing little chores when I feel like them, in between paintings. Who wants to chase dust all their life? You can spend your whole lifetime cleaning the house . . .”
Her advice was simple:
“If the house looks dirty, buy another bunch of flowers”.
My advice is save your money. Don’t buy any flowers (pick some from the garden and put them in a jar) and try a Tiny Tidy in between study/work sessions.
It’s a good idea to do a couple of Tiny Tidy sessions over the weekend so you can start the week with some kind of order.
Trust me, three minutes here and there adds up. Before you know it, you’ll be looking at a very different work/living space and feeling way more in control.
So whatever it is you want to do in life, go do it. Remember, life is for living (not for cleaning).
Dr Jane Genovese delivers interactive and engaging study skills sessions for Australian secondary schools. She has worked with thousands of secondary students, parents, teachers and lifelong learners over the past 15 years.
Get FREE study and life strategies by signing up to Dr Jane’s newsletter:
© 2025 Learning Fundamentals
