Three Organizing Truths and Questions I Learned as a Teacher

In today’s episode I’m going to bring you three organizing truths that I learned from my time as a public school music teacher and give you three questions to ask to apply these truths in your home. 

In my seventh year teaching, I finally hit my classroom organizing and decorating stride. I had a classroom that was on the elementary “stage,” and while most would say this was not ideal, I deeply loved my space. It was bright sky blue with excellent lighting and tall ceilings, and made rehearsing for concerts and musicals a snap. I could literally tape marks on the floor of my classroom, open up the dividing wall, and the kids knew what to do in a seemingly transformed space.

But when I say that I hit my organizing stride, I mean something deeper happened. My students felt very at home in my classroom that year—I know, because they told me. It was the first year that I had taken the time to label where everything was in both English and Spanish with pictures at my bilingual school. Even though I taught over 400 students from ages 4-12, they all knew where to find the tools they needed to be successful. For more complex storage spaces, where the items contained were on rotation, I numbered them, so I was able to quickly ask students to “please get more pencils from cabinet 3?” I was able to use color to designate instrument families and a composer timeline to pique students curiosity and allow them to reference how to spell long Russian names when they were comparing Tchaikovsky’s nutcracker to their little sister’s Barbie Christmas Ballet.
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I learned a few truths about organizing from this really wonderful year with my students.

​Truth Number 1: When you exist in a space with other humans, you have to consider conflicting organizational needs and wants.

​I deeply wanted all of my pencils out of sight out of mind. I hate looking at number two pencils or clusters of other writing supplies. But it didn’t work for how quickly I needed those pencils to be put away at the end of class. If I had a lidded container for them, it would have eaten up valuable teaching time for each student to open the lid, put in their pencil, and close the lid. Or inevitably the first student would forget to open the lid and would set their pencil beside the container and all of the other students would follow. By thinking about the various ages and developmental stages I was serving, I didn’t organize in ways that wasted our energy and time. I think of this with clients in many ways, but one that stands out is that I like to see how tall my clients are when I meet them for their consultation. I have flat out asked a client, “are you tall or short?” because organizing for a person who is 5’2” is going to be wildly different than I organize for Jeff and me—we’re both tall people, so we keep frequently used items up higher than the average person would want them and also deeply prefer a top-loading washing machine. 

So here’s the first question: Are there spaces in your home that you might need to rearrange based on the size, age, or needs of the people in your home?

​Truth Number 2: Agreeing upon spaces for chaos prevents overwhelm and resentment.

​In my classroom, one of my student centers was always a little more chaotic than another. And that was great, because it was nearly always contained to the rug. Students knew their boundaries of where to keep the chaos and they did it. Communicating spaces for chaos to exist can save your organizing systems because it serves the need for creative workspace. This is likely your kitchen counter in your home. You have a place for most of your kitchen tools, but when it’s time to cook, you don’t take all of the veggies to chop to the garage. You know your kitchen counter is a designated chaos space, and have generally agreed upon this, via practice, with other members of your family. 

​So here’s the second question: is there another space in your home that you could designate for a certain type of chaos that drives you crazy? 

​Truth Number 3: Labels are like beautiful little contracts between everyone involved in keeping the home.

When there is a label on a basket for the maracas to all live in the basket, and that label is not on some random desk or on the floor, it’s easy for everyone to quickly assess that the space functions better when the maracas are in their assigned space. Labels come in all shapes, sizes, and designs. Selecting designs carefully for the players involved helps bind that contract tighter. Little ones LOVE pictures when you have time and space to make that happen, whereas adult-only spaces thrive on the simplicity of a label gun. But when something is labeled in a space, and it makes sense to all of the users, it can save relationships. 

​So, our final question: what in your home can you label in a communicative way to mark a moment of agreement in your family?

I hope that these considerations help your home function more smoothly and deepen your communication with those in your home!