Springing Forward

When we first hear that spring is around the corner the first thing that comes to our mind besides, fresh blooms and warmer weather is spring cleaning. For me spring cleaning means, color coding my closet, organizing my pens, updating my planner. Just in time for the new season here are some tips for color coding your closet, organizing your desk, and updating your planner.

Color Coding the Closet:

To begin I always remember the “name”, “ROY G BIV”, which of course stands for Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. I begin by first:

- Put your neutrals at the beginning, for each color go with sweatshirts and sweaters FIRST to represent the season that is passing (imagining scooting your clothes over to get to what it is you’re searching for, which are your clothes for the upcoming season).

- After your neutrals you now get into your colors, for each color, try applying a hanger, if you have a variety of different kinds to each color or colors.

- If you have accessories such as belts, hats, and scarves, put those all on a single hanger and place them at the very last color, V.

- Multicolored clothing, if many, can be placed after whites which sit next to neutrals.

Organizing Your Desk:

Our desks say a lot about us including what we love to do and our daily life, for many, the desk is a space they reside for hours upon hours of everyday. With so much time spent at our desks I find it important to make sure there are components on it that reflect the personality, but that can’t properly be executed if we have a messy desk area. Here are some tips to organize your desk to then add components to make it feel like “us” during the spring season.

- If your desk has a drawer (those with shelves can relate too) completely clear it out and add every single one of your notebooks and planners in the freshly cleaned area. Along the sides can be one or two pens, highlighters and white out.

- The top of your desk being the most important, should be clear to where there is more than enough space to rest our equipment.

- Once the top of the desk is clean and all your staplers and post-it’s reside neatly on your desk, it’s time to update your pen cup, what’s inside of it and the outside too. The cup should be a fun cup that instantly puts you in a good mood or reminds you of a good memory, if one is tied to it. Sometimes they can become a mess too so it is important to take three different sets of pens of a different variety, brand, or color and replace them with the messy pens from before.

- In your pen cup, sneak in secondary supplies such as glue, two sharpies, two markers, and paper clips, large or small.

- For pens in general your pen of the spring season should be a four color ball pen (which I’ll mention more about when it comes to organizing your planner). Or even a signature pen of your choice that you use for most tasks, for me my signature pen has a fluffy pink ball at the top attached to a polka dot base.

- After those are sorted, I’m a big fan of adding bits and bobs such as a decorative candle or a simple photo to showcase some of your personality or reflections of your world outside the desk. Or the classic vase of flowers as an instant daily mood booster.

Updating Your Planner:

The planner is an important tool for keeping everybody’s day to day in check, helping to prevent it from going awry or in an unscheduled cahoots. Though we’ve already been using it for the last months of winter, with spring coming our planner can be updated so we have a new found sense of blossoming spring motivation to get us through until the summer. Here are some simple tips on ways you can decorate and add to your planner to make it almost as good as new.

- When writing whatever you have planned for the day, include a symbol next to it like a smiley face for certain things. For example say your planner is used for school if the subject is English, put a smiley face before it, if it’s Art put a heart, and so on. Then include a symbol key at the bottom if it’s quicker to just put the subjects attached symbol and if there’s a time, next to it. This is a new way to look at your plans for spring.

- Stickers! Stickers are my absolute favorite, when you’ve completed a plan for the day instead of what might be a check, add a sticker, any sticker of your choosing to make you personally feel good about getting your tasks done, it’s like a golden star.

- Color coding your plans is another way to set up your plans differently. Having a BIC four color ball pen is a planner, organization staple. They come in a few different types to see which colors fit you and your planning most, doing these instead of stickers for attaching something to a subject is completely valid too, or do both, all the better!

Spring not only brings a fresh renewal of energy it brings us a new energy that helps us to develop our spaces in different ways to get us out of our winter funk. I hope these tips help make your spring blossom more than ever with hope, joy and happiness!