Cleaning and Organizing

I signed my teaching contract on Friday and spent a lot of time this weekend (10+ hours) just cleaning and organizing my classroom. I am very blessed with the amount of resources my school has given me. However, the place was a mess! After school Friday my mom, Ian and I started cleaning and organizing mostly around my desk, in my supply cabinet, etc. I came in Saturday and organized all of the cupboards on the opposite wall according to subject. Today I went in and washed all of the desks and tables and made name tags and such. I got rid of a lot of the clutter. I have a whole box of things that will be up for grabs to the other teachers and a few trash cans full of things that I threw out.

Needless to say, the place is starting to look much better but I still have a lot of work to do!!! I know it will all be worth it when I meet my 16 students tomorrow morning. I will, however, be having a long talk with them about taking care of things and cleaning after themselves (we found mouse droppings :/). I also had to throw out a ton of markers that did not have the caps on so I will be teaching them to "listen for the click". I also plan to give them some little responsibilities around the classroom over time. I wish I had some before pictures so you could see the difference but below are a few photos of how the place is looking now.

Here's to making and keeping my classroom in order...