How do you get organized?

First of all, I want to remind you to enter our giveaway, if you have not yet done so! Check out Sunday's post and enter to win a full collection of classroom organization labels! The giveaway extends throughout the week, and winners will be announced on Friday, July 5th. I am trying to return visits to blogs of new followers, and it has been so much fun to see the plethora of creative, resourceful, and fun blogs out there! Keep them coming, and I will try to keep up! Don't forget to share the giveaway with your friends as well!  :)


Next, I want to share a mild accomplishment: I have recently completed a task that I have been putting off for a long time. By "long time," I mean a good, solid six months or so of procrastination. Earlier in the school year, I spent quite some time debating on the best way to organize classroom materials. As I'm sure you other teachers can understand, I experienced mixed feelings toward the wave of Common Core change in our school. I love finding new ideas and activities to use, but oh my goodness, how do I mingle those awesome, new resources with the still-usable materials in my classroom?!? When I finally decided on a sufficient method for organizing those millions of extra resources, center ideas, samples, and other activities that we teachers accumulate, I spent several months thinking "I will tackle that project during the summer." I bought the plastic file boxes and the hanging folders I intended to use. They sat there, waiting, for months, while I was certain I would be able to find a good burst of motivation during the summer.

Enter: summer.

Motivation? Eh. Not so much.

There are just so many other things to do...

Enter: landscaping, reading, cleaning, organizing, getting settled into our still-newlywed home, experimenting with new recipes in the kitchen, traveling, spending much-needed time with family and friends... you get the idea.

Still, I finally made myself get it all together, and I'm pleased with the effort, in spite of the procrastination. I created a file system, based upon skill objectives for our first grade pacing guide. I separated the skills among Language Arts and Mathematics and labelled the file boxes accordingly. Then, I created a tab for each skill (I combined some skills when appropriate) and organized them into each content area strand. Then, I filed all resources into their appropriate folder! Does that make sense? Maybe a few pictures will help...

Eventually, I will need to expand files within the skills to be more specific. There are a few strands that are rather bulky and could use a bit of organization-within-the-organization (Who's thinking of Monica from Friends right about now?). Still, I think I'm off to a good start so far. Woo hoo!

What do you think? How do you organize your materials?