For teachers who have been teaching for a few years, I am sure that if you look around your classroom, you will find many things that you no longer use. You might even find things that you have never used…especially if the teacher before you left a lot behind. Take a moment to look around you room. You might see old resources, yellowed/wrinkled paper, and bits and pieces of art projects of years past. Sometimes these items become such a part of your room that you no longer even see them anymore.
The first thing I always suggest when you want to purge items is to grab a copy paper box, or better yet, one of those giant rolling trash cans. Walk around your classroom and start picking things up. If you don’t need it, get rid of it! I can’t urge this enough. Stop holding on to things that you “might” need someday. If an item is still good and someone else can use it, put it in a box or a bin. These items might be something like resource books. If you haven’t used it in forever, get rid of it. If there is a page or two that you use, make a copy of those two pages and get rid of the book. I love to deliver my box of unneeded items to a communal space, such as a copy room with a sign that says “FREE.”
I also like to go through and throw away garbage. Over the years, you will realize that you accumulate student work samples, extra copies, dried out markers, and other bits and pieces that you will never use. Throw these out!
Books can be one of the toughest categories for me to purge. I love books. My class loves books. Every year it seems that they read different books, so I am sometimes afraid of getting rid of books. My advice is to organize your books by categories. To see my classroom library organization tips, click here. This lets kids search by interest, instead of level, and it also allows me to see which books are popular and which are collecting dust. If there is a bin that isn’t being read for several years, it is okay to donate those books (or give them away to students) and start a new bin with a new series that is being read like wild fire!
If you are planning on organizing your classroom, you can grab my FREE Purging and Organization Checklists in our FREE Resource Library here! Check in Next Week for a post all about Organizing strategies and ideas. That post will include another FREEBIE! This time printable labels 🙂
During Week 2 of our Organizational Series, we look at what to do with all of the paper clutter. You can check out week 2 here.
~Happy Organizing
Heather & Stefanie
