This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at WPUNJ chapter.

Welcome back to our returning WPU collegiettes and welcome to our new WPU collegiettes. At the start of the semester the ground work you do to keep organized will pay off when you’re four weeks into the semester, your days start to blur together and the tiniest situations drive you insane. Yes, this is college life. Luckily, being organized will cut your stress in half and there happen to be a few tips handy for anyone who needs them:

Buy a planner

Planners will help you look at your week and month and plan accordingly. They help you see ahead of time what days you’re busiest and when you have time to do a little extra work. They’re also very handy for jotting down notes during one of the infamous moments when you’re foot is halfway out the door and your professor remembers an assignment they meant to talk about.

Pre-plan your outfits

Without a doubt one of the best time-savers is pre-picking your outfits for the following day. There are going to be days when you don’t fall asleep until 4 A.M. but have an 8 A.M. class and magically none of your alarms go off and those will be the days you thank yourself for already having an outfit laid out and ready to be worn.

Plastic bins are your new best friend

One of the easiest ways to minimize clutter and maximize space in a dorm is the use of plastic bins/plastic stackable drawers to put under the beds. Some dorms (i.e. Century Hall) have less space inside the room as well as lower beds, so bins and plastic drawers will help to hide some of your clothes and shoes, while still giving you space for things like a mini-fridge and a microwave.

Command strips

When square footage is limited in a space, a lot of interior designers and home builders say that using vertical space in a smart way will pay off greatly in the long run. However, campus policies say you can’t put holes in the walls to hang hooks. A safe, easy and quick way to get things like towels, purses or shoe racks to fit in the room without taking up floor space is to hang them with Command Strips. They’re harmless to the paint on the walls, doesn’t put holes in the plaster and some can hold up to 20 pounds.

Prioritize your time

It’s important to know what can wait and what can’t on your to-do list. If there’s a party on Saturday and you know you want to go, but you have a paper due the following Monday, you should get as much of the paper done throughout the week as you can and then finish it out on Sunday. Don’t put your important tasks to the side, for the tasks that are the most fun. Reward your work with parties.

Get into the habit of starting assignments ASAP

The easiest way to not procrastinate is to dedicate 15 minutes a day to something productive. If your professor gives you an assignment and after class you have a gap and you’re not doing anything, give up 15 minutes to get a jump start on the assignment. You’ll thank yourself when the information processes better and you find that having multiple assignments due at once isn’t such a bad thing because you started them all as fast as you could; giving you time to carefully work on each one instead of rush through them all.

Photo Links:

http://tolerosolutions.com/organization-design/ (Main image)