Hello and happy Friday, FTT Family! If there is one thing a training dancer knows, it’s the struggle of keeping your bag organized! As silly as it sounds, when your dance bag is up in arms, it feels like your whole life is a mess at that moment. When you’re a busy dance trainee, it is so easy for your bag to just get totally and completely disheveled, which can really add to the hustle and bustle of busy dance days. However, during my time as a student, and even more so now as a teacher, I have found a few hacks that will help keep your bag organized and make everything in it as accessible as possible. Let’s dive right into it!
- First Aid Pack
We’ve always advocated for keeping first aid items on hand at all times, because you simply never know when you are going to need them. However, first aid items are much better kept up with when you have a designated place to store them. For items such as these, we recommend using a small nylon pouch to store first aid products to keep from rolling around in the bottom of your bag at random. As you all may know, I use a pencil box that I have had for years and flipped it into a first aid compartment. It’s big enough to hold my ace bandages, icy hot, bandaids, neosporin and really anything else that I may think could come in handy. And though it is an unconventional item to store them in, it really, really provides alot of organization with plenty of space to hold the items I just listed and much more!
- The Pointe Shoe Triple Decker
Even though this sounds like a Chili’s menu item, this is an organization hack I learned years ago and I haven’t let it go since! This is what I like to call the “Pointe Shoe Triple Decker” and it is a super simple way to keep your pointe shoes not only organized, but in the go position to put them on in a flash! Start by taking your pointe shoes and first placing your toe pads inside of each shoe. Next, place your other pointe shoes accessories in the box of each shoe, i.e. your big toe tips, toe spacers, toe tape, etc. Stack everything in the shoes in the order that you would apply them on your feet and keep them that way at all times. Every time you take them off, reassemble that same stack. What does this do, you may ask? Well, not only are all of your pointe shoes and accessories organized, but they are utterly and completely ready to go when you need them! Kiss the days of fishing for pointe accessories goodbye, because with this hack you’ll be able to stay ready so that you won’t have to get ready. 😉
- Extra Clothing Pack
The next hack is one I wish I had learned far earlier and that is to pack all of your extra clothing in a small bag all of its own. Whether it be a medium nylon bag or a recyclable plastic bag (because you know, taking care of our planet is of great importance), keeping all of your extra sweats, leos and t-shirts in a designated separate area will keep them from causing extra clutter in your bag as a whole. Another way to execute this idea is by putting clothing in a separate, large compartment within your bag if you have one available. The primary focus is just to get the items that you don’t use as often out of the way so that you can have plenty of room for the items that you do use often.
- Keep Your Shoes Up Front
And speaking of the things that we use often, let’s talk about shoe hacks! One of my biggest tips for keeping your shoes handy in your bag is by keeping them up front. If there is any item that we change out the most in the duration of a dance day, it’s definitely our shoes! From switching between jazz shoes to pointe shoes, pointe shoes to tap shoes, and most of the time all in one day, it’s so easy for them to just fly everywhere and get lost in our bags. However, I have found that by keeping my shoes at the front of the bag, preferably sitting them on top of literally everything else, I can grab them and change them out in record time! So, if you’re having to always dig around for your shoes (and their match) in between every class, give this hack a try and watch how great of a difference it makes!
- Make It A Routine To Reorganize
And lastly, let’s make it a habit to reorganize. As junkie as my dance bag can get, I try to remember to take the time at the end of every week to sit down and put everything back in order. Place extra clothing back in their bag, first aid items back in their compartment, place my shoes at the front of my bag once again, so forth and so on. The reality is, as we move and shake from day to day, our bags are naturally going to get tossed around. There is no getting around that. However, whatever we make a habit becomes that much easier to maintain, especially when it’s a good habit. So, let’s make the extra effort to keep our bags organized and clean! I’m sure our schedules will thank us later.
Thank you all so much for hanging out with us today! We hope these tips and hacks were able to help you find even better ways to stay organized and in tact this dance season. As we always, we wish you a weekend filled with love and light, and remember…
Keep dancing!
Lexi
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