How a Single Chalkboard Wall Can Organize an Entire Home

Whether you love or hate it, home organization is often a positive step towards organizing the rest of your life. However, while app calendars have benefits, they don’t work for everyone and can sometimes prevent you from creating a sense of structure. Physical calendars, like chalkboard walls and strips, maybe the answer to your productivity woes, especially inside the house.

How to Use Chalkboard Walls to Organize Your Home

The chalkboard wall organization hack can be effective for your home office, kitchen, bedroom, or house. Here’s how to set up a chalkboard wall for maximum productivity.

1. Paint the Chalkboard Wall Where You’ll Always See It

Journals and app schedules are often ineffective because they’re hidden from view. So unless you have your journal open at all times or you set notifications on your calendar app, you may forget your appointments. Even then, you may start to ignore notifications if they’re too frequent.

Chalk walls, whiteboards, and custom photo calendars are always open and are typically in high-traffic locations, such as your kitchen or office. That means you’ll always see your to-do list without having to physically open an app or book. Plus, you’re bound to look at it more often.

2. Make it Easy, Simple, and Fun To Stay Organized

The hardest thing about staying organized is consistency. Unfortunately, what often prevents consistency are small hurdles that build up to bigger problems. For example, you’ve already lost if you have to outline a calendar on your chalkboard every week before you can write a to-do list.

Instead, use permanent markers or paint to draw things you’ll need every week, such as a monthly calendar or a grocery list. Then, chalk to write things that change, like dates and appointments. Your calendar doesn’t have to look pretty, but it does need to be functional!

3. Keep Supplies Nearby and Color Code Everything

Another barrier for an organization is complexity. When you look through your calendar app, you should know what’s happening that day based on the color you wrote in. For example, pink is for birthdays, and red is for work appointments. If everything is in the same color, it’ll meld together.

You could also use symbols to represent urgency. For example, a circled item is urgent, and a non-circled item isn’t. Above all else, keep your supplies nearby. Use a bucket or ledge next to the chalkboard to grab what you need without walking away from your task.

4. Have Two Sections For Permanent and Erasable

If you’re creative and feel good about erasing and starting over, separate your chalkboard into two sections. One can be for permanents, like your calendar, while the other can be for things you want to erase, like your weekly goals or an itemized daily schedule.

It’s also helpful to make a permanent list of what you want to put in the erasable section so you don’t forget to add them. For example, you know you need to clean the bathroom every week, but you may overschedule or forget and neglect to do it if you don’t block off the time. 

5. Schedule Time to Rework or Rewrite Your Calendar

It sounds strange to schedule from time to schedule, but unless you’re an organization master, you will make mistakes. Maybe you didn’t write something down or underestimated how long a task would take or how often it needed to be done. No worries, you can adjust!

During the first few weeks, take note of the things you liked about your organization system and what didn’t work for you or your family. Write them down on your chalkboard wall if you’re home or on a note if you aren’t. Then, rework your calendar weekly until you find a style that works.