Freebies & Oraganization Day 2

Kleinspiration has a great link going with tons of bloggers linking to freebies on their blogs! Head on over to check it out! For my freebies, just click here to go to all the freebies I've ever posted on my blog - isn't it nice having them all in one spot? Make sure to follow my TPT store too as that's where I put all my freebies now! Now onto Day 2 of Organization Mode:

Today I woke up and did not want to organize at all! Luckily my sweet daughter who has culinary aspirations made me an awesome omelet and my sweet son made me a huge mug of coffee. After we ate breakfast and cleaned up a little I sat down to organize. I had to think long and hard about this one. How do I need to organize my materials - what will be the most effective way? Since I have limited space and part of it is indoors and part of it in the garage, what am I going to put in which location? What am I taking back to school with me and what am I going to leave at home? As you can imagine, answering these questions took a bit of time - I did a ton of blog surfing while I thought :)

Here's what I came up with:
Since I teach by themes, I'm going to organize my boxes accordingly rather than by month or skill. For example: generally I teach Apples in the Fall sometime and thus all of my apple stuff has beginning of the year skills. Some months I use one theme for the whole month, other themes are just a week or two long. It really depends on a) how much stuff I can find on that theme and b) how much I enjoy the theme. I've taught themes I didn't like in the past and it wasn't a fun experience for anyone, so now I skip over themes I don't like - gotta leave something for other teachers to cover, right? So, here's my theme list, arranged somewhat in chronological order:

So, that's about 24 themes which means I need 24 storage containers - some larger than others! What I put in my containers is varied - generally there are classroom decorations for each theme - cut outs, window clings, a tablecloth for housekeeping, maybe a stuffed animal or two, all of the math/literacy stuff that corresponds to that theme, any special t-shirts or apparel items that I wear exclusively during that theme, and any art items that solely relate to the theme, including templates and samples. My books I have organized ala this idea:

(click the picture to be taken to the post about it which links to the book dividers freebie)

So now I don't have to worry about fitting theme books into each theme box - which saves me a ton of space in each container! So today what I decided to do was to create a label for each theme, so I can see at a glance what is in each box. Some may call this procrastination, but I promise I will start the real organizing soon! I used 3 1/3" x 4" Avery labels which come 6 to a page. Large enough to see easily, but small enough to be economical when printing.
It took me forever to make them because it's in Word and I've grown used to the ease of using Power point instead. Still, they came out rather cute I think :) If you'd like a set, let me know and I'll see about making them into a PDF, right now I'm headed to bed - I think tomorrow will be our first pool day of the summer :)

Edited: Click here to download the labels for free in my TPT store :)