So, you want to get organized. Well, there are a couple of things to get straight first.

You may have gotten this book from a parent, a teacher, a friend's sister's boyfriend's great-grandmother, or you may have bought it for yourself. It doesn't really matter where you got it, as long as you're reading it because you really, genuinely want to get organized. If you're planning to read this just to get people off your back, you can put the book down right now. Organizing is only worth the effort if you are motivated to do it for yourself; you have to want this.

And more than that: you should understand why you want it. Look, I'm a teenager, too. I know what it's like to have five hours of homework, extracurricular passions that you want to escape into every day after school, and an active social life. All this while constantly being told both to "Never stop adding to your college résumé!" and "Take advantage of your teen years. Use this time to discover yourself!" This book was written to help you set up a system that will enable you to do it all, or at least accomplish more within your given schedule and space.

Have you ever heard the saying "The shoemaker's children never have shoes"? Though I am the daughter of a professional organizer, I have not always been as organized as I am today. It was not some talent passed on through birth; I didn't even learn it at an early age. I have struggled with the issue for years, partly because I didn't feel the need to get organized for a long time, and also I thought being disorganized was the only way I could distinguish myself from my mom and let the world see that I was my own person.

To my mom's credit -- although she tried to get my room into shape for years -- she let me find my own way about it, all the while pointing out to me the ways in which I was already organized. I was never late for anything; my stuffed animals were always organized neatly by personality; my Barbies (all 102 of them) were in a big bin, which I bought for $5 at a flea market; and my books were all on a shelf in order grouped by type: picture books, easy readers, chapter books, poetry, and series books (Minnie-n-Me, Babysitter's Club, C. S. Lewis).

Yet, throughout elementary school, the rest of my room was always a total wreck. I'd lose game pieces, toys, and friends' phone numbers all the time. I'd often forget to do my homework, or was unable to find it in the piles of my room. Sometimes I'd even lose clothing -- I can't tell you how many mornings I could come up with only one sneaker -- or couldn't put my hands on my backpack. I thought that this was just the way things were and, as a result, never bothered to try to change.

It wasn't until I entered junior high school that I felt the need to do something about the chaos. At the time, school was not my top priority: dance and my social life came first. So I focused my organizing efforts on my areas of interest. I began by separating my dance clothes into a drawer and putting my dance shoes in boxes. I created a file for all my forms and dance information. To keep track of all my friends' phone numbers, I wrote each person's name and number on a color-coded Post-it, depending on where I'd first met them (junior high school, elementary school, dance school, or camp). I tacked these Post-its on the wall in four clusters. From then on, I could find any phone number at a glance and track how well I was balancing my time between my various social groups. And I always knew where my dance stuff was.

In high school, I began to understand the importance of doing well in classes and decided to get that part of my life under control as well. My schedule had begun to intensify, and I decided that if I wanted to do my best at school and still find time for the things I enjoyed the most, I'd have to quit worrying about being too much like my mom or what others thought.

I organized my school papers into a series of binders so that I'd always know what I needed and when. Then I created a matching filing system at home. At the end of each semester, I emptied the binders into the folders and started out fresh. This way I had a logical place for my work all year long. I also began using a planner and a schedule on my computer to carefully structure my days to make the most of them, planning time for my homework, my dance classes, and all my other activities. I got a shelf and drawers for my locker, so that instead of just throwing everything into a big pile, I could make better use of the space and locate anything I needed quickly.

Today, after years of staying organized, I am happy to report that I have succeeded in creating an effective system. But what's most important is that it's my own system -- not one that my mother, or anyone else for that matter, tried to force on me. That's why it works. And that's what this book will do for you. It won't tell you how to run your life, where exactly to place each hook on the wall, or which classes to take to make your life easier. But it will help you figure out a way to turn over a new leaf and make the most of your space as well as your time.

I can't promise that you're going to get everything done and still get ten hours of sleep at night. What I can promise you, however, is that at the end of this process you'll be able to increase and make the most out of your free time. You'll be amazed how much time is gained when you don't have to search for your stuff, or when you know exactly what your plans are ahead of time. We all know that we're living in a crazy world that demands a lot from us. The organizing process is very grounding. It's a great way to gain control of your life and world.

Getting organized does not mean becoming neat or cleaning up. You may be looking around your room right now and seeing some- thing that looks like a disaster area, and yet you may still be perfectly on top of things. In Chapter 1, you'll find a self-assessment that will help you figure out if you are in fact already organized. Organizing is not about how things look; it's about knowing where your stuff is, keeping your schedule together, and making your space and time work for you.

We're all organized in one way or another, whether we know it or not. It may be something as seemingly insignificant as the way you get your math homework done or how you arrange your books. But if it works for you, that's a start. The next step is figuring out what makes your organized areas so effective and applying that approach to the less organized parts of your life. Don't think that you'll never be able to pull it all together. Anyone can be organized; it's not an inborn talent. It's a skill that can be learned.

Organize your:

bedroom | school stuff | study time | activities | social life