Packing Up My Classroom

Every year I do the same basic things to pack up my classroom for the summer, and every year I come back in the fall wishing I'd done it differently.  This year, I did!  It may be that as you read this post, you think to yourself, "Really?  It's taken her several years to figure this out?" but perhaps, instead, you are like me.  You don't always see the most obvious solutions to a problem until you've faced that problem multiple times.  So, here are the new ideas I put into practice this year to help make life easier at the end of August when I start putting my classroom back together for a new year.

Problem #1:  I always clear my desk off at the end of the year and pack everything away.  School policies vary about this, but most schools do some sort of work within the classrooms during the summer break.  Since I'd rather not come back to dust and paint flecks coating the items that I keep on my desk, I always make sure that everything is hidden away.


How I've Done It Before - I always reorganize my desk at the end of the school year, so I usually have extra space where I've cleared out book order catalogs, student files, and extra copies of everything.  In the past, I've filled up these nooks and crannies with all the items off the top of my desk.  Anything that didn't fit in my desk ended up on my bookshelves or in my utility closet.  It's a great idea, if you are trying to use as little space as possible.  However, when I come back in the fall, I never know where anything is!  I can't find my stapler or my hole punch or even my flip calendar with funny quotations for each day of the year.  It's really annoying!  Plus, in the process of finding all those things, I have to rummage through everything, leaving my desk unorganized again.  It never seems to get properly organized again until the end of that school year, at which point I fill it up with all my desktop items, and the cycle starts all over again.

How I Did It This Year - This year, I had a light bulb moment while organizing my desk!  There was no reason to put everything in my desk or in my closet.  It would make much more sense to put all those items in a box, label it as desktop items, and leave it in my room for storage.  We are allowed to leave boxes of items in our rooms over the summer, as long as they are labeled.  So, off to Office Max I went, and I bought a 10 pack of bank boxes (you know, the cardboard ones where you fold and bend them into existence) for about $13.  Now, I look forward to going back to my classroom and unpacking my desk in a very short amount of time!  Plus, I found a number of other uses for those wonderful boxes!

Tomorrow's Problem - Effectively Saving Materials for Next Year