My Work Space: Clutter Free!

I took a challenge from Clutter Free classroom to clean up my work space, and it was needed. I was tired of walking into my classroom and the messiest, most cluttered area in the room being my area!

Here is a link to the before shots. This was a fairly easy transformation. A little work with big results!

 This is the view from the door. I removed all the graphic organizers from wall. I try really hard to keep the top of the brown shelf clean. I added the lanterns to bring the eye up. That was a tip from a reader and it made a huge difference!

 Here is a close up of my work space. I don't have a traditional teacher's desk, so I work and teach from here. I do guided reading groups, science experiments, social studies study groups, writing conferences, you name it...it's done here, so I need this space to work for me!

 I moved the rainbow drawer unit to the student area. They can fix those drawers all day long...they were driving me nuts! I moved the students' white drawer units to my area. I use those to keep work for each subject/class throughout the day (we are partially departmentalized). I already had the scrapbooking paper lining the inside of the drawer, but it helps bring unity and color to the plastic drawers. It dresses them up a little, dontcha think?

  I had these plastic drawers on my brown books shelf already, but they were down low on the bottom/near bottom shelf. I had all the teacher guides and notebooks on the top shelf. By swapping the shelf the items were stored on, I brought unity and color to the most visible shelf (top shelf). I have the exact same materials, just in different places. The notebooks and teacher guides look kinda "junky" even though they are in great shape. It's just a lot of broken color and shapes and sizes. Now they are not visible unless you are behind my desk. 

 I raised this table up about an inch, and slid my filing cabinet under it. I don't know if you can tell, but I have a table skirt and ribbon on top of the colorful drawers. I can't decide if I want to add it or not. It would be in the way. I am in and out of those drawers throughout the day for supplies. But if I decide to add it, I have the materials ready to go!

 What do you think?  It's going to take work for me to keep the top of that shelf clean, but other than that it's been an easy, breezy change!

I have LOTS more pictures of my classroom that I'll be sharing over the next few weeks, so check back soon!