Busy as a Bee

I have been super busy this past week. At the end of last school year I brought home EVERYTHING that belonged to me from my classroom and it has been living in my garage. I had planned on going through a few things every week while I've been off. Well, of course that didn't happen. So this past week I have gone through just about ALL of it. The week it was in the 80's here I thought about doing it every day...but never got around to it. So this past week while it was 95-100 degrees I did it. Anyways...I have 2 sets of shelves and a file cabinet in our garage storage room and it is now very neatly organized. I have boxes for each center, teacher resource books, homemade games, treasure box items, bulletin board things, and teacher equipment (laminators, book binders. etc) I am so happy with the way it is turning out. I also have all of my center storage baskets in one place. So, once i went through everything I could see what I had and could then start creating files and drawers for all of my teacher supplies that will be taken to school. I don't have a teacher desk so I have to be very creative on how I can store everything in a corner and keep it looking organized. I think I have finally gotten it organized into 5 sets of plastic drawers...1 mini, 2 small, 1 medium, and 1 large. After I figured out where everything would go i HAD to make them look CUTE! So far I have covered the 2 small sets of drawers. I had already done the mini- Teacher's toolbox. Here's how the 2 small ones turned out...

So about a week ago I decided to make the adorable teachers toolbox...well after many days of deliberating...should I paint it? what colors should I use? should all of the paper match? should I use Mod Podge or tape? I have finally finished! All I have to do now is label the drawers (which I'm gonna wait and do after I get all of my supplies in there)

Drum roll please..............

In case you were wondering  the answers to all of the questions I had over the past week ...here they are! Hopefully it will help someone else when they decide to take on the project for themselves.

Should I paint it?
Yes...I decided to because the stack-ons that I bought from Home Depot were gray...so I debated whether I should go with white or black.I really wanted to do white, but then realized how dirty they would get so I went with black instead. Black really makes the colors POP I think!

What colors should I use?
Since I'm going with kind of a rainbow theme this year...really just bright colors....I decided to use several primary colors.

Should all of the paper match?
NO too boring for me!
But it will probably save you a lot of headaches if you buy a pack with all of the papers together. I originally tried to use the hodge podge of papers I had left over from my scrapbooking projects...but I couldn't find enough that really meshed for me. So after I bought the theme packs I was much happier! (that could have been just because I got to go shopping but IDK)

Should I use Mod Podge or tape?
I really struggled with this one. Originally I was going to use Mod Podge but after watching the tutorial from Maria at http://kindercraze.blogspot.com/2012/05/fancy-up-your-sterlite-drawers.html
I decided tape would be just fine, so I used double sided tape. This will also work with my need for change every year. The tape will make it much easier to change up the paper when I get tired of it.

I am going to try to add some pictures into this post...
Last year I was in a new school and was a total MESS. Even though I had been teaching for longer than most of the teachers I was working with , I still felt like "I didn't have a clue what I was doing" needless to say it was a whole new "Pre-K world" for me. Forget Pre-K, it was a "whole new teaching world". Our principal is AMAZING and is so knowledgable about Pre-K and teaching in general. My biggest problem was my lack of organization going in SO....this year I am determined to start off on a more organized foot. I have been searching all over other teaching blogs and Pinterest and have come across some WONDERFUL ideas. Here is the one I think I will start with. I got this from Mrs. Rojas post and hers turned out so cute I thought I would try too. When I finish mine I will post a pic too.

This was my inspiration