It’s 7 a.m. and you’re rushing around the house getting ready to leave, but where did you put your keys? Your homework? What about your backpack? Sound familiar? With some simple organization tips this could all be avoided.

Because everyone organizes a little differently; find what works for you. Feel free to use variants of the following tips, but be consistent. A Clear space means a clear mind.

Motivation

Before you can get started with organizing, find your motivation. Your motivation can be anything. Maybe it’s to have a way to organize your thoughts, get good grades, have a reason to purchase cute stickers, colorful pens and markers, or maybe you just really love to organize. If you’re looking for motivation, watch a YouTube video, read a blog, even try finding fun little supplies. Craft stores can be a good source to fulfill your organizational needs, or you can find things around the house as well.

Planner

A good start is getting a planner or finding some way to organize your thoughts and to-do lists. Some other things besides homework that could go in your planner are appointments, ideas, reminders, lists, meal plans, goals, and even notes.

When organizing your busy planner, color is key. It helps prioritize to do’s, assignments, and goals. Color can also help make the planner look neat and tidy (color coding!), make certain tasks pop, and more. Whatever your vibe, remember to use it consistently.

Backpacks

Once you have an organized planner, it’s time to move on to organizing your backpack. Backpack’s can be notoriously cluttered and just plain disgusting at times. This can lead to ripped paper, missing assignments and forgotten supplies at the bottom of the bag. A good first step is to dump everything out. Everything from notebooks to forgotten apples. Once it’s all out, throw away any and all trash, unwanted papers, old assignments, broken pencils, and more. Now look at what is left and go through it and determine what is a necessity and what is never used or needed. A good tip is to be honest with yourself. If you don’t think you need it, leave it. If you do end up needing it, add it back in.

When organizing your backpack, make sure everything has its place, use pockets, and pouches to organize loose items. Group certain items together, ensuring pens and pencils have their place and paper clips have theirs. Old tic-tac boxes can be amazing for organizing itty bitty stuff. Keep binders or notebooks and folders together depending on the subject. In the end, the best tip for keeping your backpack clean and organized is staying consistent.

Lockers

If you’re a consistent locker user, you know they can get pretty messy pretty fast. There are many ways to organize a locker, and a lot of them are cheap and free. That means you don’t have to go out and buy ridiculously expensive locker shelves and mirrors and what not. Like the backpack, the first thing you have to do is empty the locker out, completely. After everything is out, throw away all trash and old assignments. Then, go through everything and determine what you really need in there.

A great tip is to find a locker shelf, which is a great space saver. They can be pretty cheap if you know where to look, like the Dollar Store. With shelves, you can store books and other items both under and on top. Locker accessories can be fairly expensive. It’s typically cheaper if you can find a way to DIY them. If you want a mirror, it would be easy to find a cheap you at the dollar store or someplace similar and hot-glue magnets to the back, same goes for a dry-erase board for notes. You could also use sticky notes in place of a white board and glue the magnet to the back of the pad.

You can organize pretty much anything if they have motivation and keep it consistently clean. When making the newly organized area look clean, use personal touches, and similar colors. There are always fun little bins and boxes to help keep stuff neat. The craft store and the dollar store are your friends.