Clutter Free Classroom Challenge

So, I know this is theoretically a crafty type blog.  I am diverting from my typical (can you have typical with as few posts as I've written?) post to share my classroom.  I do, after all, have a life beyond making awesome things for my home and my friends. :)

Jodi over at Clutter Free Classroom is posing a challenge for all us teacher folk out here on the interwebs.  We are going to CLEAN UP OUR MESS!  Yes, in all caps.  It WILL happen.

I discovered CFC over the summer when I was spending entirely too much time on Pinterest.  I love her organization strategies for the classroom.  I love having an organized classroom--or rather, love the idea of having one.  My room is the most organized this year that it has ever been.  I moved rooms, and took the opportunity to purge many unneeded items.  Unfortunately, the room I moved to has collected years of clutter.  It has two storage closets in the back that have been collecting teaching supplies since God was a little boy at school here.  Ok, I exaggerate.  But really.  Maybe Moses was here when these closets started getting filled with junk gloriously wonderful teaching supplies.  I am still working on these rooms, but mostly I try to ignore them.  I did work on cleaning them out when my fellow 5th grade teacher retired a couple of years ago, but there is still a long way to go.  The other clutter I have is just random bits and bobs that can't seem to keep a home once they find one.

Here are the revealing and slightly embarrassing pictures:

 

This is my "teacher desk."  I opted out of a traditional one several years ago when I realized it was a dumping ground for unnecessary items.  

 This is my guided reading table, and where I sit to do most of my planning and grading.  The stuff on the window ledge behind the table is my teacher stash--files, stickers, post-its, pens, etc.

This is the counter beside my group table.  My lesson plan book lives here, as well as my copies (in the pretty magazine files), supplies for the week, my Scentsy (fifth graders can really stink!), and my communication folder bin.  My goal is that the supply stash can move to one of the back closets after they are cleaned up a little bit more.

This is the view from my teacher spot at the red table.  I can see out the door (and out the actual door), and I can see that pile of mess under our student supply table.  It needs a bit of work too.  Somehow, we can't seem to put things back in a tidy manner.  I think there might be permanent marker outlines for things in the near future.


And, what you've all been waiting for--the back rooms!  I tried to get good pictures, but the rooms are narrow and long, so it is difficult to see everything.  Here is room one (school-wide science supplies and the old fourth grade teacher's material):

And room two:

By the way, all those filing cabinets aren't mine.  The school data manager keeps files down here too.  That is part of the problem--these rooms are a catch-all, and no one ever worries about what they look like. 

Eeep!  Wish me luck.  I will probably start with the visible areas in the actual classroom, and then tackle the scary rooms it chunks during work days and such.