Being unorganised with school work is a lot more of a problem now that students are having to work from home, and it can be really tricky to keep track of every piece of work you do and when to do it, or where to keep it. Here are a few ways of improving your at-home study system.

Make space.

This is the most important thing you can do, and once you've done this, I promise that working from home will seem a lot less overwhelming. Try to find your own space to be in. I know it can be hard, depending on everyone's home situation and space, but it doesn't have to be big or special, it can just be a little corner of your room where you have space to work and organise things.

The best thing would be to have a desk to work on and to store everything around, but you can just adapt to whatever's easiest for you. Make sure it's a space free from clutter and distractions.

Once you have your area picked out, make sure to centre everything school-realted around that, and have a little section for prioritised work. It can be as simple as a basket to chuck work into, or a drawer, but make sure it's nearby and visible, so that you always have everything to do in one place, and you don't forget about it.

Wall storage.

This might not work for everyone, but personally I find that seeing everything I need to work on in front of me is best, to be able to see the bigger picture, and not lose track of anything. It's important therefore to keep everything as visible as possible, and the best way to do that is to hang it up in front of you.

Pegboards and pinboards work great for this, because you can hang up anything you want and organise it in whatever way's easiest for you. You can use postits, hang up small shelves and jars onto the board to optimise space, and pin up any timetables or plans you need to remember. A good way to organise this is with clipboards, each with a different purpose, hung up on the board.

I also find it useful to keep a whiteboard or blackboard in the centre of it all with your to-do list of every day. Keeping it so visible will ensure you don't forget it.

Keep a general notebook.

This is so useful for so many things, and you can use whatever best suits you. Find any sort of notebook or notepad that you like, whether it already has categories and specific sections, like an agenda, or it's completely blank and empty. You can use colours, borders, and fancy fonts, and personalise it however you'd like.

It's good to keep a weekly timetable, especially when you're learning from home, so you can keep a routine and remember everything you've done. Colourcoding it is even better, using one colour for compulsory lessons or work, one colour for things you'd like to do yourself, and another for revision or homework time.

Use your notebook to keep track of the work you get given each day, and the work you do. You can use categories like work set, work started, and work completed. Remember to keep track of the dates and the prioritised things, so that if you need to find something, you can go into your notepad and it'll all be there.

Colour-code.

This is so usefull to avoid feeling overwhelmed and cluttered, and it's so good to have a system like this so that you can instantly tell what goes where. Pick a colour for each subject, and stick to it with everything you do.

My avice is to have a notebook, folder, and storage space for each subject. The folder should have multiple tabs, so you have space to store notes, mindmaps, flashcards, and past paper questions for each topic in your subject. The storage space can be as simple as baskets, boxes, or magazine holders next to your desk, but having them in the same colour as your folder and notebook of the same subject gives it an extra touch, and helps you keep everything in the right place. 

Stationary.

Stationary is the thing that will affect whether you actually want to do the work or not. Having lots of brightly coloured pens, highlighters and postits is great, but it won't help you unless you know where they all are, and having them spread everywhere, cluttering your work space, will only hinder you. To avoid this, you can do a few different things.

Firstly, you could free up a drawer and divide it into sections, which you can do in several ways. The simplest is to use strips of cardboard, intersected, to make different squares of space in the drawer. You can also use the bottoms of cereal boxes, or plastic boxes/dividers. Feel free to decorate whichever dividers you use, whether by wrapping them in felt or wrapping paper, or by painting them.

An alternative is to store stationary in mason jars on the desk, or on a shelf behind it. The third, and my personal favourite idea, is to use a shoe organiser, hung up next to the desk, to store everything you need nearby.

 

Overall, while it can be very difficult to work from home, and sometimes it might seem too overwhelming, or daunting, just try a few of these things out, and attempt to organise your space and learning better. I promise that as soon as everything around you becomes neater and more compartmentalised, so will your mind, and your approach to schoolwork. Experiment with different layouts and organisation methods to find something that suits you and makes you happy, and have fun with it!