Student Organization: It can happen!

As a former student myself, I always dreaded hearing that tired old phrase at the beginning of every school year: "This year, you will be keeping a folder of your work." Have me do the work, have me correct the work, have me help others with their work, but please, please, PLEASE don't make me manage my work by organizing it.
As an overtly right-brained pupil, organizing anything (my room, my school supplies, my time) was a great challenge. I would much rather have simply done the assignment, and then forget its existence.
This attitude remains pervasive among today's students as well: "I'll do the work, but do I have to keep up with it?" is a common question I'm asked at the outset of every year. In my classroom, however, we don't keep folders. We generate portfolios, and the contents of those portfolios are a source of pride at the end of every school year.
Work that demonstrates real progress or proficiency is kept inside a brightly-colored and labeled file folder, and that folder is kept in the classroom among everyone else's. This eliminates the "I left it at home" excuse, as well as the "I forgot to put it in there" excuse. The whole process is overseen right there in class.
For parents struggling with a student whose lack of organization is becoming problematic, here are a few solutions:
1. "A place for everything, and everything in its place." This was a favorite expression of my great-grandmother, and it still holds truth today. Many times, students don't organize because they fail to understand the expectations. If you want a child to put shirts in one drawer, pants in another, underwear in a third, and socks somewhere else, then this process and its outcomes should be thoroughly explained and modeled for the child in question. I would not expect my students to know which tray their work is turned into at the beginning of year, especially if I had never told them what our system of organization requires. Likewise, parents should not expect their children to hang up dress clothes or place items into a hamper or basket if such an expectation has never been made clear. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, the old saying goes.
2. Those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Look around your own computer area, family room, kitchen, or elsewhere. Are the items there neatly packaged and stored, or is it an area of chaos and bedlam? One cannot expect children to maintain standards that are not realistically followed by the adults who assert them.
3. Label it. By providing labels on drawers, storage units, and other available spaces, your child will know what goes where, whether they're six or sixteen. There are age-appropriate ways to do this -- You wouldn't for instance, use Disney princess font to label areas in the room of a 13-year-old boy. Therein is a formula for total meltdown.
4. Be consistent. If the expectation has been made clear that item A will go into storage space B, then follow through with that expectation and enforce it. The time has never existed when we could rationally expect our kids to be self-monitoring. They still need guidance, they still need help, and they still need to know that you're in control of every situation under your roof, even if it seems minor. It's called a sense of stability, and children of today need it badly.

By following these few tips (and others from organizational experts), your child can excel at becoming the ship-shape model citizen that you envision him or her to be. No, it won't happen overnight. No, it might not always happen the way you'd planned. But yes, children will gain a greater sense of security and a feeling of contentment from the knowledge that their world is orderly, structured, and sound. It's never too early to begin laying a foundation for success, and this is one positive way to start.