Time Savers! {Blog Hoppin Linky} ... with a time saver FREEBIE!

I'm linking up with the fabulous ladies over at Blog Hoppin' for Thankful Week! The theme today is "Time-Savers" and I'd love to share a few ways I (try!) to help me save some time.

We all know that there won't ever even begin to be enough hours in the day for us teachers to get everything done that we need to. I feel like no matter how long I work or how many weekends/nights I put in, everything will never be completely finished. So I figure, if I can get a few things in order to make my life a little easier, it's worth it!

One of my goals this summer was to get. my. classroom. ORGANIZED! And it was worse than ever after this past school year -- on the last day of school we were informed that our classrooms were being cleaned for the summer beginning the very next day. Well, seeing as my classroom still looked like students were coming the next day, I literally had to shove everything into whatever basket, container, or cabinet I could find; shove all my classroom furniture to one side, and then crawl into a corner and cry about it. Okay, maybe the last thing isn't true, but I sure felt like it. ;)

As soon as we could get back into our classrooms over the summer, I started the long organization process. One of the first things I did was buy a huge plastic drawer set to organize all my student supplies. Here's the before and after!

It's a huge time saver for me this year because I don't have to go digging around in a huge pile of things for the one supply I need. I realize this time saver isn't exactly revolutionary, but you know how organizing always gets pushed further down the to-do list after school starts!

Another huge part of my classroom organization process was creating labels. I made labels for all different shapes and sizes of containers so that I knew exactly what was in them. This also saves a ton of time for me because I now know exactly where everything is!

The 5-day organizational filing tool from Lakeshore is a huge time saver for me. After I do my lesson plans, I stick every copy, material, etc. needed for that day in the bucket that matches that day of the week. That way everything I need is right there at the front of the classroom, easily accessible, when I need it. I don't have to go hunting around in piles around the room for the copies I need.

My last time saver project is still an "ongoing process". I decided I needed a new way to organize all of my math and literacy stations, so I bought a plastic hanging file tub, hanging files, and 3M Sticky Tabs to label and sort all of the different categories of centers I have. I've got labels made for Write the Room, Rhyming, Alphabet, Ten Frame, Brown Bear, etc! I put station materials and one copy of the recording sheet in a big Ziploc bag and stuck the sticky tab to the front with the center/games' title written on it. I'm kind of organizing them as I use them, but next year it will be SO wonderful to have them all right in this one spot. So, not really a time saver this year, but it will be!

Now for the freebie! If you want to use my classroom labels to save yourself a little time and get your classroom organized, you can download them for FREE in my TPT store! Just click on the picture below:

And, like I noted in the product description, if there is something you'd like for a label and you don't see it in this pack, leave a comment either on this blog post or a comment on the product in my store and I'll create one for you (to the best of my ability) and add it to the freebie! Just let me know and I am happy to do it.

Hope you'll join in on the fun this week over at Blog Hoppin'! Can't wait to see everyone else's ideas!