Decluttering your classroom for summer
Here’s the thing, I know we don’t always have the energy this time of year to make decisions about all the “stuff” in our classrooms, there is just too much grading to do, too many grad parties to attend, too many projects to finish and not enough time in the day. However, one of the key things I have learned as an educator over the past 15 years is that doing a little bit NOW will pay off big time when August roles around and you get the “end-of-summer blues”. I also find it a bit comforting to take time during the hectic spring to get rid of the things cluttering up my classroom. It’s almost like it helps me find closure in this year while looking towards hope about next year. Here are the steps you can take to wrap up the year and help you go into summer with a sense of accomplishment and calm.
Steps to Declutter Your Classroom
Make the time- there are lots of “little” tasks you can do throughout your day that will have a big impact. But also, there are projects that will take a little longer to do. For those projects, put time on your calendar to do those tasks without any interruptions. Carving out 30 minutes once a week will actually have more of an impact than you may expect and you can usually get through more than you think in that chunk of time. You might also find that once you get started on a decluttering task, you have momentum, so you just want to keep going…so do that!
Pick ONE starting point- start with decluttering student papers (all those no-name papers, the pile of things you wanted to do something with…but didn’t, the stack of “Extra” copies). Grab the recycle bin and fill it! Or perhaps it would be easier for you to start at your desk and clear the clutter (find the top of the desk again, clean out the unknown food substance in your drawer or throw away the broken pencils you have been collecting). Another area you could start with are the student supplies. Get rid of any broken or unusable supplies, figure out which calculators need batteries, throw away the fidgets that no longer fidgets, just all the things that have piled up in the supply bins over the course of the year. Bottom line, pick one area to start with and don’t feel like you have to do the WHOLE room in one decluttering session. Doing your whole classroom will burn you out pretty quickly at this point in the year, so don’t do that to yourself.
Once you have picked your starting point, begin SORTING! If you decided to start with student supplies, go around your room and find EVERY glue stick and whiteboard marker and pencil and eraser and….you get the picture. It is important for you to sort things into piles of “like items”. This helps you figure out what you actually have in your classroom, and what you might need to be looking for when all the “BTS sales” hit the stores. This also allows you to let go of the items you have too many of (like the 12 staplers you accumulated—you don’t need 12 staplers). Sorting is an important step in decluttering anything in life, and this is the step that makes things a bit “worse before they get better”, but it is a crucial step that you shouldn’t overlook. It’s also important to not stop at this stage. I know you will begin to lose the energy here, but grab a protein bar and keep on going.
4. Once everything is sorted, decide what stays and what needs to go. You can just put some things directly into the trash can, or maybe you have a colleague that you know would use your extra supplies, or perhaps you just take a bag of stuff to be donated. Getting rid of items is a difficult step for teachers because we tend to want to hang on to things “just in case”. The truth is, if you have been holding on to something in hopes of using it for a couple years now…you should toss it. First of all, you just aren’t going to use it and secondly, it can be replaced if needed. Space is a precious thing in classrooms so purging it of “someday” items will help ease the clutter issue.
5. Now that you have sorted and purged, you can begin to organize the space. For those of you who have to pack up your room every year, this is the time to put your “keep” items into nicely labeled boxes. For those who can keep things in their room, this is when you can rethink how you use the space and make some changes before you put everything back. Just because one area of your room has always been the spot for books, doesn’t mean it has to stay that way. Put things where they are easy to access and near the are they will be used. You should also consider keeping things in bins or boxes at this stage. Items need to be contained so that they have capacity limits. You don’t need to buy any cute/fun bins, just use what you have or what you can easily find. We all know that bringing pretty things into the classroom tends to not end in our favor anyway, so don’t fight that one. Functional and inexpensive is key here. Visit the dollar store or the teachers lounge or mailroom to grab up the extra bins other teachers put in there when cleaning their room.
6. The last step is really a suggestion that you can use at any stage of the decluttering process and that is to let your students help! Students are great at sorting through old supplies and papers and we all have those students that love to do this kind of project. You can have the final say on anything they want to get rid of, but if they can sort all the different kinds of paper into neat piles, then by all means, sort away children! But also, teaching them the steps of organizing is a life skill. I mean, every adult I know has to organize things…and this is a real struggle for some of them. It is a great learning opportunity for them and it is helpful to you.
I know the end of the school year can feel like a difficult time to slow down and think about decluttering, but it is also the perfect time to do this. Mindlessly separating the colored pencils from the dried out markers can actually give your teaching-brain a little break and help you feel like you accomplished something during that planning period where you found yourself just staring at your computer knowing you “should” be getting something done but just can’t muster up the energy. Taking some time now to do these tasks will ultimately keep you from coming back into your classroom as often during the summer as well.
Happy Sprucing!
