With the explosion of home organization content appearing on YouTube and streaming channels, families everywhere are starting to recognize it’s time for the “tidy up treatment.” While not every teen needs the full KonMari Method, there are some serious reasons why now is the time to help your teen or young adult learn organization strategies. Implementing some small changes for your unique learner now can go a long way towards reducing stress, boosting academics, and setting the stage for greater life-long independence.
Why organization skills are important
There are many reasons why we want our teens to demonstrate strong organizational skills. Research shows the benefits of organization across many different areas of development. When things are disorganized, we report higher rates of distraction and stress. Students who lack organization skills have more academic challenges, experience lower grades, and negative interactions with teachers. For many teens and young adults with unique learning needs, organizational skills have to be taught explicitly through targeted interventions. Even modest improvements in organizational skills can decrease symptoms of inattention and increase academic performance.
Organization and Other Executive Functioning Skills
In some ways, it’s hard to tease out the difference between your teen or young adult’s issues with organization and other executive functioning skills like planning and time management. If your child learns to use an organizing tool like a day planner, more than likely, you’re also teaching time management, prioritization, and planning skills along the way. If your child learns to reorganize closets and keep a nice tidy space, they’ll need to use working memory and self-monitoring skills as well. That’s why it becomes so important to recognize and establish SMART goals when it comes to teaching these skills—pinpointing the exact behaviors to target can generate benefits in other areas.
7 Organization Skills to Teach Your Teen
1. The Difference Between Neat and Messy
When we get started working on organization skills, one of the first things we ask and evaluate is if the child knows the difference between a clean, organized space and a messy one. It sounds simple, but some individuals with unique learning needs might not evaluate their environment in the same way you do.
Start by pulling up some images online and ask your child to identify spaces that look clean and organized. Show some photos of unusually messy rooms, some that are cluttered but organized, and some images of areas that might need some tidying up. Then move to spaces in your household–you might even need to make some messes of your own!)
Can your child identify and discriminate the differences? If not, it’s not likely that you’ll be able to agree on what it means to be organized until you do. Keep working to establish useful definitions of what it means to be organized that both you and your teen can relate to.
2. How to Use Designated Places
Ben Franklin is often cited for once saying it’s best to have “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” Work with your teen to create a designated place for items of high importance. Start with one category of things like “school supplies” or “morning routine” and establish where each of those items belongs. If your teen benefits from visual prompts, use a label maker to identify the designated place for things. Take photos of how a space looks when everything is put away, and then store those photos in an album on your teen’s phone or tablet. When they need to know where something is (or where to put something back when finished), they can use the photo album to get everything back in its designated place.
3. How to Start with A Clean Space
Decades of research into organization and productivity consistently show our brains perform better in clean, uncluttered spaces. Teach your teen to start each work session by spending a few minutes tidying up their workspace. Have necessary learning materials close by and put away distractions. If they don’t have a designated workspace in your home, work together to create a clean and organized space that incorporates your teen’s choices in furniture, décor, and location. The more motivating they find it to spend time in the environment, the more dedicated they’ll be to keeping it neat and tidy.
4. How to Prep the Night Before
We’ve written here before about how important it is to use checklists and daily agendas to keep us organized and on track—especially as we wrap up the day. While we may want our teen to ‘just know’ how to organize for the next day’s activities independently, a more realistic strategy might be to use an end-of-the-day reminder list. Teach your teen to prep all the tools and materials they’ll need for the next day the night before. Not only will they establish a habit of organization, but they’ll also be more apt to use time management and self-management skills to execute the plan they’ve created.
5. How to Use a Weekly Organization Checklist
Some of the top experts in organization and planning remind followers that it’s best to organize in small “tidy up” sessions rather than all at once in what quickly becomes a monumental chore. Teach your teen and young adult to do a few different organization tasks each day so avoid having a massive build-up in jobs to complete.
Start by working together to write down all the organization and cleaning tasks for the week. Put a * mark next to any tasks that need to be completed daily rather than once per week. Then, divide up the tasks evenly across days of the week. Allow your child to make choices about when they’d like to do which duty. Place the checklist in an easy-to-find location and reward your child for completing the tasks as outlined.
For a sample, download our Weekly Organization Checklist for Students.
6. The OHIO Rule
Along with teaching your teen to use a weekly organization checklist, you might also teach them how to organize and prioritize the tasks they complete. For years, process engineers and organization experts have touted the OHIO Rule or “Only Handle It Once” for specific tasks like email, paperwork, and homework.
By teaching your teen to initiate and complete tasks as soon as they encounter them–rather than putting them aside or coming back to the same tasks many times—you’re giving them a powerful tool to promote success.
7. How to Recognize Overwhelm & Overload
Despite using many of the strategies above, there will be times when your teen stumbles with organization. It happens to all of us. What’s more important is to teach your teen to recognize when their organization strategies have fallen apart, when they’ve drifted from using the tools that promote success, and when they’re overloaded.
For many teens and young adults with unique learning needs, it’s when overwhelm and overload kick in that they can revert to using problem behaviors instead of communicating they need help. Teaching your teen to recognize these signs and what to do at the moment to pause and reset the organization system can save everyone a lot of stress.
Model the Behaviors You Want To See
Remember those famous Michael Jackson song lyrics about “starting with the man in the mirror?” Those apply to organization skills too. If you expect your teen or young adult to be using these new habits, it’s pivotal that you model the behaviors you want to see from them. If your child sees you scrambling every morning to find your keys or showing up to appointments without the right materials, it’s hardly fair to hold them to a different standard. If you want to tackle their organization, planning, and time management skills, make sure that yours are in good order first.
Unsure Where to Begin? Ask an expert.
If you’ve reviewed the list of organization skills above and aren’t quite sure where to begin, that’s okay. For many families, a boost in executive functioning skills requires an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ approach. If you’ve tried some of the strategies above or are concerned you may not have the support necessary to teach organization skills, consider who else might help support you and your child.
Your child’s medical care team or an experienced mental health professional can assist you in how to get started. Working with a trained professional with experience in helping teens develop and enhance executive functioning skills doesn’t mean you’re a ‘bad’ or ‘inadequate’ parent. It means you’re taking the best steps possible to help your child succeed.
Further Reading
- American Society of Professional Organizers
- Anderson, D. H., Munk, J. A. H., Young, K. R., Conley, L., & Caldarella, P. (2008). Teaching Organizational Skills to Promote Academic Achievement in Behaviorally Challenged Students. TEACHING Exceptional Children, 40(4), 6–13. doi:10.1177/004005990804000
- Extreme Productivity: Boost Your Results, Reduce Your Hours – by Robert C. Pozen
- Haapakangas, A., Hallman, D. M., Mathiassen, S. E., & Jahncke, H. (2018). Self-rated productivity and employee well-being in activity-based offices: The role of environmental perceptions and workspace use. Building and Environment, 145, 115-124.
- Life Skills Advocate Blog – 6 Steps to Help Your Child Develop a Strong “Why” When Goal Setting
- Life Skills Advocate Blog – Planning Skills: Long-Term Supports & Strategies For Diverse Learners
- Life Skills Advocate – Virtual Executive Functioning Coaching
- National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals – Get Organized & Be Productive
- The KonMari Method – Tidying Up with Marie Kondo