Keepin' It Real

Okay, it's confession time.  My room does not always look like this.  In fact, most of the pictures I take at the beginning of every year eventually make me feel incredibly guilty, because despite obsessive-compulsive planning and plotting, my little kid-diddles just aren't as concerned about the aesthetics as I am.  As it should be.

These pictures are from last year.  Keep in mind, my classroom was in a two-year-old school, so it was pretty color coordinated.  I assure you, it was not always perfect, but I had worked out some organizational oopsies before I ever took these pictures.  This is the only classroom I have been in for more than one year.  This year marks my fifth classroom in six years! While switching rooms always presents a lot of challenges, I will say that the constant moving definitely helps me with the purging process.  I kinda/sorta purged an entire mobile dumpster full of junk from this classroom before I moved to my new classroom.  I don't know whether I should be proud of that or completely ashamed.  Bahaha!

Anyway, this was my old "nest" last year.  You can find more HERE.  They are totally beginning of the year pictures, which is why my walls are fairly empty and my CAFE menu was bare....  Truthfully, I prefer to see work all over the walls and more anchor charts, so I kind of prefer the last picture in this first series to the sterile blank slate pics.

 

 Okay, and just so you know I'm not exaggerating about the portable dumpster, there she is in all of her glory.  The fact that you can see anything peeking over the top of this monster is sad.  I filled that bad boy UP, and that was after I left a ton of goodies downstairs in the workroom for my teacher friends. 

Anyway, this year, I started teaching in a new school district, as you probably know if you've been following my blog for a while.  This is how it looked at the beginning of the year:

Okay, now I'm going to let you see what my room looks like right now.  It looks basically the same as it did, just a little less polished.  Most of my room still looks presentable, but these are the areas that I could use a little TLC, or Tender Loving Cleaning.

These pencil boxes used to do the trick in my old cabinet... but as you can see... this is so not working.  At least it's out of sight.  Any ideas about how to make this cabinet a little less rusty and a little more fabulous?!

The state of my desk drawer.  Kind of random and sad. 

My multi-colored binders need some work too.  They are tilted and kind of ugly.   They also need labeled on the spines.

Clearly, I need to re-organize this area.  It's full of all of my Reading Street curricular pieces, and it's really not even that functional.  Last year, I used them for papers that had already been copied.  This year, it's kind of my catch-all instead.

Ahhhhhh!  I am so embarrassed to post this.  Obviously we need to have another mini-lesson about how to return books.

I also need to find the time to attend to the stack of books in the book hospital. 

Oh wow.  This makes me cringe too.  I am in a basement so nothing stays on the wall.  I honestly have not had time to stick the alphabet line back up onto the wall, because I have been so busy wrapping up the second nine-weeks.  This area used to be a bulletin board area.  Remember?  Now, I stick anchor charts here instead.  Let's just say that my $8.00 fadeless paper had an unfortunate mishap earlier in the year involving a pencil, and although I tried to cover it and work with the hole, it eventually tore and fell down in the middle of class.  Due to time constraints, I have not addressed this eye sore yet.  It is my least favorite part of my room.  Please don't judge me!  Ha!  Any ideas for keeping paper on chalkboards in a damp basement?!

  A

And there you have it, friends.  My MESS!  I am totally a week behind on this, but the main thing is, I'm going to make an attempt to participate in the Clutter-Free Classroom Project!  If you want to participate, pop over to Jodi's fabulously creative and practical blog for details!  Click below to play along!