I started in the office, concentrating in the computer area. College seems to bring with it numerous credit card offers and bills and notifications that always seem to be tucked in various places on the desk, asking to be thrown away or forgotten. So I got very a simple, $3 silver mail sorter that went nicely with our translucent blue desk (who says you can’t be functional and stylish?.) There are slots for outgoing mail, my mail and my boyfriend’s. Using this simple system, we have been able to keep track of our mail much better. Now I can pay my bills on time and not have mini heart attacks when I can’t find that one, really important piece of mail.

If you are anything like me, disorganization is not simply limited to your desk. No maam; it extends also to planner and mind. It’s difficult to remember due dates in the midst of piles of homework, so I got a small dry erase board from a dollar store and stuck it to the nearest wall with all the due dates for our monthly payments. It’s not written down and forgotten about in some small place in my planner or on a note that will get lost; it’s in a place that I can’t help but look at.

Another problem in my working area was not having a place to put necessary paperwork like tax information, financial aid information and notifications from school. As it stood, all these important documents were tucked willy nilly in various folders stacked on my desk. Of course, this too has a simple fix: I went to Office Depot and got a small file box and created pertinent files for all of my paperwork and all of my boyfriend’s–making sure to keep them separated… just in case, well, you know. I also got a small storage container with drawers to sit on the desk and hold office supplies for $7.

The rest of the work for this room involved cleaning and reorganizing. I threw away a lot of old folders that were taking up space and freed a lot of shelf room that I left fairly bare, knowing that as I re-organized the house, I would probably find things to fill the office shelves. That is one of the key things I learned going room by room: it isn’t necessary to fill every blank space with decoration or stuff, its good to leave some room for all the new things you acquire, like research for papers or schoolwork for a given semester.The rest of the room is still filled with the boyfriend’s stuff, which isn’t great, but I have learned to pick my battles and just make sure that if it isn’t necessarily well organized, at least it’s clean.

The next room I concentrated on was the bedroom. I’m like many women who find themselves with more shoes than room to store them. I bought two small bins for $3 each to store my shoes: one bin for dressy, one for casual. This freed up a shelf in my closet that I could use to store my pants. Knowing myself, I have a hard time keeping shoes in any sort of order, so instead of trying to find a way to organize and display my shoes, I just threw them in a bin with a lid to create a cleaner look.

I became a big fan of things with lids, so I got a standing laundry hamper with a lid. I’ve found that lidless hampers tends to look a little messy and standing hampers take up less room, which is greatly useful in small spaces like apartment bedrooms and dorms.

I needed to do something about my accessories, and quick. I scoured the house, looking for old boxes that I’ve kept for such an occasion and found instead an old popcorn tin in the office that I’d kept just in case. I cleaned it out and it fits perfectly in my closet to hold my scarves, gloves and other various accessories. I also got an over the door rack with hooks for $5 to hold purses and coats, which frees up a lot of room in my closet. When looking for storage, think outside the box (literally). Those old shoeboxes that you can’t bring yourself to throw away could become jewelry boxes or hold knicknacks.

Ah, spring. The bees are buzzing. The birds are singing. The flowers are blooming. It’s gorgeous outside, all sun and bright colors and cool green grass. All you really want to do is take your textbooks outside and do your work on the green. Mostly because your room is a complete and utter mess.

Spring cleaning is that thing you hear about that usually applies to houses, right? Wrong. Spring cleaning can apply to apartments and dorms, too. The smaller a space is, the more cluttered it gets and the more quickly it happens. Before you know it, you have to shovel a path from the door to your bed – and you do NOT have the time to clean it up.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. You don’t need an hour or two to clean your room; just 15 minutes will do. Muchly inspired by Fly Lady’s 15 Minute de-cluttering guide, here’s how to get your dorm or even your bedroom clean (or at least, cleaner) in just a quarter of an hour.

Make up your bed. It’s the biggest part of your room, probably. It’s your focal point, definitely. It only takes a few minutes to straighten out your sheets and put the pillow where it belongs. If there’s stuff on your bed, dump it onto the floor. Yeah, you heard me. Dump it. Making your bed is kind of an instant gratification thing; in about one minute, you can see a major difference in your room.

Grab the dirty clothes. Bet you a bunch of the stuff on your bed and what is now on the floor was dirty laundry, wasn’t it? Grab your hamper and put the dirty clothes where they belong. Do not do the sniff test. If it was on the floor, you probably need to wash it again, anyway.

Toss out the trash. Those flashcards for the test you had last week, that empty pizza box, that pen you know is out of ink but you hope will magically start working again…they’re all trash. Toss ‘em. My favorite method of dealing with trash, the 27 item toss, comes straight from Fly Lady; grab a garbage bag, grab 27 seven items that you know fully well are trash, close the bag, and dump ‘em. I like to time myself and out do former records.

Put miscellaneous stuff in a basket. It can be any container you want, really, but you have to keep it in view so that you can deal with it later, when you DO have the time. Anything you haven’t thrown out or put away yet, throw it into something; a wicker garbage can, a Tupperware container, even your bookbag. It has to be something you need to use soon, however, or else the stuff’ll just sit there. Knowing you need whatever is holding your random crap will inspire you to sort it later.

Wiping, sweeping, and mopping. This part is the easiest part. Once all of your stuff is relatively taken care of, grab a broom and sweep the floor. Vacuum if you think it’ll save you time and you know there’s nothing on your floor that’ll cause a nasty calamity. If you care to, mop, but don’t just wave the mop over parts of the floor. Really actually mop. Finally, grab some paper towels or disinfectant wipes and wipe down surfaces like your desk, the TV, the TV stand, and so forth.

If your room wasn’t that bad to begin with, you’re probably done. If it’s a bit of a mess, you may need another 15 minute spree to take care of it. If you would make a pig uncomfortable, do this in installments instead; 15 minutes for your desk on Monday, 15 minutes for laundry on Tuesday, and so forth and so on. Your room will be clean before you know it, and you’ll be free to go outside and enjoy the weather – and it’ll be because you want to!