Challenge Your Students to "Kondo" Their Study Spaces
Updated on July 4, 2023
Kondo
transitive verb
1: To tidy up using the methods advocated by Marie Kondo, especially keeping only those things that tokimeku (spark joy).
Kondo (third-person singular simple present Kondos, present participle Kondoing, simple past and past participle Kondoed)
Is there any greater sign that someone has made their mark on the world than when their name becomes a verb? Marie Kondo has become an internet, television, and Netflix superhero with her Shinto-inspired take on organization. Her name has become synonymous with elegantly decluttering even the most disastrous spaces.
Having a messy desk or study space has never been conducive to learning. Now, with educators and students alike trying to learn amid the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has never been more important to have a distance learning home base that is optimized and efficient.
Taking Ms. Kondo’s own words as inspiration, here are some simple ways you can help motivate your students to declutter their study spaces and optimize their home learning experience.
“The inside of a house or apartment after decluttering has much in common with a Shinto shrine... a place where there are no unnecessary things, and our thoughts become clear.”
By minimizing clutter, students’ minds are free to maximize focus (deep, right?). It’s true. Not only do students need distraction-free studying experiences, they also need distraction-free studying environments.
Start with a clear surface. Have a student walk you through a specific study session workflow. As they describe their work, have them list the specific items they would need for each particular task. In a truly organized space, anything that isn’t on that list shouldn’t be within reach—or possibly even within eyesight—for that particular work period.
Keep a clean digital environment. More and more, students are required to engage with digital resources and learning environments as part of their educational experiences. The problem is that the same internet that can bring students their content is the same internet that brings them every song, video, and social platform they use when they aren’t studying.
Encourage students to tidy up their digital workspaces to help minimize distraction. Keeping a clean operating system desktop and a dedicated studying web browser (one free of bookmarked profiles, games, and streaming content) can help remove the temptation to stray from the work at hand.
Lead by example. Going through the motions of tidying up your own workspace can help you both understand the challenges and the value of this type of minimalist organization. Talking to students from a place of actual experience will mean more than speculation. Teens can smell adult hypocrisy a mile away!
“To truly cherish the things that are important to you, you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose. To get rid of what you no longer need is neither wasteful nor shameful.”
Knowing when to get rid of something is challenging for most of us. Unlike a rotten piece of fruit or a broken bowl, it isn’t immediately recognizable when one of the things occupying a study space has outlasted its usefulness.
Clearing out the things that clutter a workspace can make the rest of the organization process much easier.
Digitize and recycle any paper that is no longer going to be written on. Paper clutter can quickly overwhelm a workspace. Use a scanner, smartphone, or digital camera to snap a high-resolution image of any references you may need for later, stash the files in a properly-labeled digital folder or cloud-based storage. Then, recycle or physically file the papers.
Eliminate nonessential tools for the study space’s purpose. Items like sticky notes, pens, stickers, and highlighters should be pared down to the bare minimum. When an item breaks or starts to wear out, ditch it, and decide if it warrants a replacement or not. If an item isn’t being touched session after session, it can likely be removed.
Consolidate gizmos and gadgets. There is no need for a pile of thumb drives, multiple calculators, or a tangle of obsolete device chargers in a study space. Trade-in smaller storage devices for a single, larger drive or go all-in on cloud-based options. When a device is no longer useful, be sure to get rid of its cable and other proprietary accessories, too.
“Effective tidying involves only three essential actions. All you need to do is take the time to examine every item you own, decide whether or not you want to keep it, then choose where to put what you keep. Designate a place for each thing.”
Marie Kondo stresses the importance of acknowledging the personal connections to the things we keep. Things that don’t “spark joy” within us should be discarded. This process is time-consuming, but purposeful and serves as a cornerstone of her KonMari philosophy.
When it comes to a study space, have students focus less on what “sparks joy” and more on what sparks learning and engagement. If the objects in a study space cannot be linked to the session’s task, they should be removed. The items that remain should be organized and positioned for maximum effectiveness within the space.
Dedicate learning spaces to learning. Clerical and organizational items that don’t directly relate to learning or rehearsing content (like staplers, paperclips, and binders) should have homes off of the work surface and out of view to prevent distraction.
Keep books on a shelf, not in a pile on a study surface. Only the books that are necessary for a given lesson or task should be in sight in the study space. The rest should be placed somewhere else or discarded altogether.
Backup supplies don’t need to be part of a study area. Items like extra pencils, erasers, sticky notes, loose-leaf paper, and calculator batteries do not have to lie in wait in a work space. Create a supply station away from the study area so that these items are available, but cannot become a distraction.
Looking for more great study space advice to share with your students? Check out our guide from this past summer for optimizing your students’ studying space.
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