. When a ream of paper splits open before it is sold, they often mark it down to $3-4. It usually arrives in a gallon sized ziplock bag due to the torn packaging, but the paper is just fine. And, you can't beat the price. When I need paper and can't find any marked down due to torn packaging, I usually turn to office supply sites like Zerbee where I can pick up Fireworx brand colored paper for $5-6 per ream. Colored paper makes me smile, so it's a price I'm happy to pay.
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| Storage Cabinet in Classroom |
For the past two years, my colored paper obsession has lived on the second shelf of my black storage cabinet. I stand the reams of paper up in cardboard and plastic magazine holders. This has worked fine, but I've sort of outgrown my space. I kept having to split up reams of paper into multiple holders to make it fit.
My students are allowed to get paper out of my cabinet to use for various school projects and origami. They weren't always the best at putting up the paper that they pulled out that was the wrong color. And, pieces of paper would often end up crumpled and unusable. Plus, they had trouble differentiating between copy paper and card stock. "Why is this paper so thick?" Well, it's called cardstock. "Oh."
The other day, I saw a picture on Pinterest that suggested storing colored paper in your filing cabinet with hanging file folders. I decided to give this a try while reorganizing my classroom the other day.
I put all of my cardstock in one drawer of my filing cabinet. Note to self. Do not buy more yellow cardstock this summer! You have plenty!
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| Organizing Card Stock in Filing Cabinet Drawer with Hanging File Folders |
And, I put my colored copy paper in a separate drawer.
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| Organizing Colored Copy Paper in Filing Cabinet Drawer with Hanging File Folders |
I like that the paper is organized by color now. And, if you pull out a piece that is the wrong color, it should be easy to see where it goes back. The files can easily be re-ordered and rearranged.
A big bonus is that it now clears up shelf space in my storage cabinet that is definitely needed! The bad thing is that I used the filing cabinet drawers that I allowed students to use this past year to store their interactive notebooks. Hmm... Must think up new solution for that. I guess I have all summer to come up with a new inb storage solution, though.
After moving my paper over to my filing cabinet, I found myself with all kinds of empty magazine holders. But, they quickly were repurposed to hold extra spiral notebooks, composition notebooks, and pocket folders for next year.
I have so much organizing left to do with my classroom. Once I get everything put away just like I want it for the summer, I'm going to do a post about everything in my storage cabinet. Prepare yourself. I've collected a lot of stuff in two short years of teaching!
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