8 Ways to Stay Organized this Spring

If you’ve chatted with friends or family recently, the topic of summer travel has probably come up. We’re at the stage of the year where everyone is starting to ideate on where they’d like their warm weather travels to take them, whether that’s spending a week laying on a beach, heading somewhere adventurous for a serious trek, or exploring a city that’s been on your list.

Getting all of your dates, flights, and hotels booked (and, if you work in a corporate job, the all-important approval on your OOO) now will save you lots of stress–and potential last-minute price increases–down the road. Not sure where to start? Our travel expert, Sophia Ahl, has offered up tons of amazing recs for summer trips: from the unique to the classic. Plus, our favorite travel accessories will help ensure you get there in style.

We can’t be the only ones who find ourselves making tons of plans once they weather warms up, only to reach the day-of and realize we’re overcommitted at best and double-booked at worst. Our hack is simple, but game-changing: invest in a physical, month-to-month wall calendar, placed somewhere you see every single day, and manually pencil in all of your commitments (including important work meetings and deadlines). Seeing what you have for a month on a single page can help you process whether it feels like enough, or if you need to adjust and reschedule for the sake of your energy.

On that note: we always try to reserve one weeknight (or even Sunday) for never, ever making plans. If you’re an extrovert who can’t get enough of going out, you might be exempt, but–for most of us, the key to keeping our social batteries running is a quick, weekly recharge. Commit to spending your night in solo doing something you love, like watching a movie you’ve wanted to see, getting lost in a book, or taking an epsom salt bath. It might not feel like an “organization hack,” but trust us, you’ll feel much more refreshed and ready to take on the world once you’ve taken some time for yourself.

We’ve talked about journaling here before, and, most recently, we interviewed Dianna Cohen and Elizabeth Kott, two acolytes of The Artist’s Way, on their journaling habits. Cohen, the founder of mega-successful haircare brand Crown Affair (and our inaugural guest on In the Home) describes “morning pages,” 3 pages of automatic writing (literally: you just write exactly what’s on your mind for 3, 8×11 pages) as designed to “clear your mind of clutter, uncover your thoughts, and spark creativity.” We find that, on days we start with morning pages, we tend to remember our little to-dos and create better structured plans for what’s ahead than on the days we don’t. Before you ask: yes, writing 3 pages of what can sometimes feel like nonsense is very tedious. But trust us (and Dianna and Elizabeth), try it.

Once you’ve done your morning pages, make your first work task of the day, every day, writing out a manual to-do list. Split it into two categories: work and personal. Divide those categories into four subcategories: urgent and important; important but not urgent; urgent but not important; not important and not urgent. Address them in that order.

Organization bonus: at the end of the day, write down your six main tasks (and no more) for the following day. In the morning, when you write out your to-do list, transfer those first!

Summer makes meal prep a little bit harder, but that doesn’t mean it’s not possible: here are some ways to make it easier! If you’re already a meal prepper, but you head out of your home city most weekends, just do a shop for Sunday-Thursday, excluding whatever you usually buy to last you the weekend. But also: keep in mind that after a long, tiring summer weekend, you may not want to be cooking: try and work a Sunday evening dinner out (or takeout) into your budget in advance.

Another thing we love to do to save time in the mornings? Prepare overnight oats and iced lattes the night before. Grab, go, and enjoy some precious extra time in the summer sun on the way to work.

Speaking of meal prep, another way we’ve made our own lives easier is by spending an hour on Sundays checking out the weather, our social schedules (see: the monthly calendar) and planning our outfits and workouts in advance. And we mean that literally: write them all down in your planner, book the classes in one go, and lay things out the night before. Trust us when we say reducing the mental load on these seemingly small decisions can make a huge difference during busy season.

This one’s a little less conventional than the rest, but you already know that, here at Casa de Suna, we’re fans of Human Design. A couple of years back, we interviewed Human Design expert Erin Claire Jones on How to Get Organized based on your Human Design Type, and it’s a piece we find ourselves referencing often when we feel overwhelmed.