Monday Night Blues && and Sneezing Galore!

My usual Sunday night blues have turned into Monday night blues. Three day weekends are fabulous. . .I love them. . .but this one went horribly wrong. I spent it in bed, wrapped up in a blanket, surrounded by tissues. . .sick.as.a.dog. I finally took myself to the doctor (after being stubborn for a month). Don't worry I wasn't sick for a month straight. . .just off and on. One cold would go and another one would replace it about a week later. I don't know what the official name for the "funk" that I caught is, but I'll be a small pharmacy for the next 10 days of pill taking. I didn't accomplish any of my fancy to do list items, but I did get a ton of TV watching done && I'm halfway planned through March (almost). I'm 6 minutes away from the newest episode of watching my Beverly Hills Ladies dish out the drama and I can hardly stand it, so I thought I would pop in really quick to eat up the time and talk about how I organize my own drama. . .lesson planning drama that is.

Things can quickly go south when you're trying to organize all of the hard work that goes into planning all of those mouth droppingly awesome lessons for your little ones. I'm guilty of letting things pile up and then spending hours...days...ok weeks...fine months making sense of it all. That was until this summer when I found a system that finally worked for me. I do a lot of creating things to use within the classroom on Publisher. . .subsequently I also do a lot of laminating (I'm pretty sure the laminator volunteer would like to pinch the poo out of me by now). I also did a lot of frantic digging around in my overflowing book baskets trying to find the books that I needed for each week's lessons (mind you there was no rhyme or reason for the way they were placed into the baskets).

This summer I took all of my files out of the filing cabinet and started organizing them into monthly binders. I have a binder for each month that is seperated by the number of weeks within each month. For each week I put any sheet that needs to be copied in a page protector. This includes the following: homework letter/homework/lesson plans/math worksheets/ELA center sheets/weekly poems/theme plans. Yes, my obsession with organization may have just hit a new level. . .but don't count your chickens before they hatch because I'm not done yet. The binder didn't solve all of my organization issues...remember the lamination & book storage problems?? I found some clear storage tubs at Wal-Mart that fit perfectly above my cabinets on my back wall. I bought everything they had (got a few weird stares), but I was happy, happy, happy! Now, all of my books and laminated items go into the bins (seperated by months and of course weeks). I have a bin for each month.
I am completely in love with my binders/bins and I hope that maybe I've given someone out there a new idea on how to get the clutter organized. . .because we all know teachers and clutter CAN go hand in hand. . .but they don't have to.


Until next time. . .live, love, teach!