Weekends and light homework weeknights offer great opportunities to reset materials! Keeping an organized backpack saves time and avoids stress throughout the week, and many students can find it overwhelming just to get started. With an organized bag, materials become easier to find, assignments are less likely to get lost in a pit of crumpled papers, notes can be retrieved smoothly, and utensils and tools can be snatched up at a moment’s notice. It can be hard to know where to begin for busy students navigating the chaos of a new semester. To provide some clarity, we’ve posted our backpack organization guide below:
Identify a weekly time to organize
The first step toward a neat backpack is committing to 10–15 minutes per week dedicated to arranging materials. Use a paper planner to schedule organizational time for a weekend afternoon or another patch of free time during the week. At Green Ivy Educational Consulting, we find that setting a timer and making backpack organization a weekly habit makes it less of a chore and more fun!
Tip: Be ruthless but not reckless when getting rid of old papers. At the beginning of the organizational block of time, we recommend dumping all of a backpack’s contents on the table and removing anything that is not needed, including outdated handouts, accumulated brochures, broken pencils, etc. Be careful not to toss any important study resources!
Organize binders
Some teachers have a system or strategy for organizing the materials for their classes, and if a teacher has a preferred system, feel free to use their suggestions. Otherwise, we recommend having a separate binder for each important class (if possible!) and using our divider system.
We recommend dividing each course’s paperwork into 5 sections: notes, homework, handouts, tests/quizzes, and binder paper. When organizing binders, recycle or remove any outdated papers that won’t be needed in the coming weeks.
Tip: Put a portable hole puncher in the backpack to ensure papers are placed into their proper binder promptly!
Paper planner
Always make sure the paper planner has a comfortable spot toward the front of a backpack. It’s important to be able to pull out a planner at a moment’s notice both during class and at home while checking daily homework.
Tip: Use a sticky note to mark the current week, making it easier to flip to the date and update the planner quickly!
Organizing a backpack for the first time can take time and lead to some funny discoveries … it might take an hour to work through all of the above steps. However, once there’s a steady habit of organization, backpack orderliness should take up only 10–15 minutes on weekends. Use and repeat these regrouping tips to save time and avoid stress throughout the school year!
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