Keeping your desk clean and orderly is important to your success in school. An organized desk puts everything at your fingertips and saves time and frustration when changing classes or simply locating the materials you need for your next subject. Keeping homework in order ensures that you can find it when it is time to turn it in. Putting your notes in their proper folder makes it easier to study for tests or refer to them when answering homework questions.

Buy Your Materials

Most teachers pass out a list of materials on the first day of school. This list may include items that will help you get organized and keep your desk straightened out, such as the kind of notebooks or folders you should have and something to hold your pens, pencils or crayons.

Clean

Take everything out and pile it on top of the desk. Wipe out the inside of the desk with a rag to remove things like pencil shavings, pieces of crayon and other small bits and pieces. Follow this by cleaning with an antibacterial wipe.

Sort

If you have crumpled and wadded-up papers, flatten them out to see if they are keepers or can be trashed. Put the keepers in one pile and throw away the others. Look through the rest of the things you took out of your desk and make two piles. One pile is stuff you need and should keep; the other is for things that can be thrown away, like pencil nubs, loose staples and spoiled food.

Organize

Divide the pile of papers you are going to keep into subjects. For example, put all your math papers together, all your English papers together, and so on. If you have a large notebook that all your subjects are kept in, add the papers you kept to the proper section in your notebook. If you have a separate folder for each subject, add the papers to the appropriate folder. When that's done, put the notebook or folders back into your desk. An easy way to recognize which folder goes with which subject is to color-code them. The blue folder is math, the green is science, and so on. Place your textbooks back into the desk in ascending order, from largest to smallest. Be sure the bindings are facing front so that you can easily see which book is for each subject. If you have covered the books, try color-coding them to match the folders, or write the subject on the binding. Collect your writing tools and small things like paperclips, and place them in some sort of container. A pencil box is good for this, but a zip-lock bag will do just as well. Place this container in your desk.