Organize Your Teacher Desk in 7 Easy Steps

Organize Your Teacher Desk

Need to organize your teacher desk?  The beginning of the school year is the perfect time to work on it!  If your desk isn’t organized, rummaging around looking for things can cost you some of your precious minutes of teaching or planning time. You could misplace a vital form or a note from a parent.  Not cool.

No worries though!  I will teach you how I manage to have an organized teacher desk all year long.  Follow these seven easy steps and you will have a stress-free space!

Step One: Starting Fresh

Empty your desk and give it a thorough cleaning.  I personally like to use Method sprays because they are plant-based and biodegradable!  (They also smell amazing.)

I use an all-purpose spray for any metal or plastic parts and the wood polish spray on the wood surfaces.

You can find my favorite spray cleaners on Amazon by clicking here.

Step 2: Sort the Contents

This is the biggest but probably most important step!  Sort all of your things into organized piles. 

These are the categories that my supplies typically fall into:

• Writing Utensils: pens, pencils, highlighters
• Paper products: index cards, notepads, post-its, nurse passes, hall passes 
• First Aid: bandaids, gloves, gauze
• Adhesives: stickers, tape, sticky tack, sticker name tags, labels
• Fasteners: tacks, brads, paper clips, rubber bands
• Tools: scissors, hole punch, stapler, tape dispenser
• Papers: to grade, pass out, file

Throw out any trash and donate anything you don’t need to another teacher or charity.  

Pro tip: If you didn’t use it last year, you probably won’t this year! 

Step 3: Select Drawer Organizers

You have completed the first steps to organize your teacher desk.  Now you need to put everything away. Some simple and stylish organizers will help keep things in place.

I get a variety of small baskets, bins, and shallow trays to corral my things. You may want to choose items to match your theme or simply pick whatever is the most affordable. Clear plastic bins and trays are always a good bet because they match any theme and allow you to quickly see what is inside. No one wants to waste planning or teaching time hunting through their desk!

Step 4: Decide Where to Place Items

My school-provided teacher desks usually have a slender drawer above the chair.  Let’s start there! 

I usually place a shallow organizer in this drawer and add all of my fasteners like paperclips, rubber bands, tacks, safety pins, and more!  I also usually keep extra staples in this drawer.

Additionally, I usually have two small drawers and a bigger drawer at the bottom.  In the top drawer, I place all of my items from the paper products pile.  I stack post-its, index cards, etc. in small baskets inside the drawer.

In the second drawer, I put the supplies from the adhesives pile.  Again, it helps if you can use small baskets to contain the clutter.  These do not have to be expensive.  You can find baskets or containers at the dollar store!

I put my first aid supplies and purse in the bigger drawer at the bottom.  In an emergency, I can open this drawer, grab what I need, and GO!  You will have to do what works best for your desk.  

You may place the items as I suggested above and have plenty of room left.  However, the longer you teach, the more you tend to accumulate.  In recent years, I added two sets of rainbow drawers to hold extra materials.  This was a game-changer for me. 

*** Please, do not feel like you have to spend money on these types of items.  It is just a suggestion for teachers that need more space and have room in their budget.

Step 5: Plan for Papers

Nothing makes a desk harder to work at than having papers strewn everywhere.  I tame the paperwork chaos in a few different ways.

1. I place a low filing cabinet or a table next to my desk to create extra surface space.
2. I add paper trays and label them: To Grade, Graded, To Do, and To File
3. I place a tall filing cabinet right next to my desk.  This gives me a surface to use as a magnet board.  I clip parent notes, schedules, and other high-priority papers here.

Step 6: Stage and Style

This is the fun part!  You can keep it simple or go all-out to match your classroom theme!

A rotating tool caddy is a must-have item for the top of my desk.  This holds all of my writing utensils and tools.  This keeps everything in easy reach when I am working. You can find my favorite organization items on Amazon by clicking here.

I usually add a lamp, a cute faux plant, and a framed picture of my family.  Staring at their sweet faces keeps me going on the hard days.  I definitely always made sure to have a designated spot for my iced coffee!  You may want a coaster or a mug rug to set cold drinks on.  More than once, the condensation crept over to my papers. Boo.

You may want to decorate the front of your desk by adding paper with a border or a colorful bunting. I often kept mine clear, so I could take advantage of the magnetic surface.  This saved me space on my whiteboards at the front of the room.

Sometimes I had magnets with the students’ names on them, and they could move their magnets when they came in to help me track attendance.  HA!  Like I ever remember to take attendance!

Other years, I used the front side of my desk as a literacy station and let them build words with magnets there.  Do what works best for you and your students.

Step 7: Organize Your Teacher Desk for the Long Term

Now to answer the important question…how do I stay organized all year?

One time, I made a mistake.  Remember that tray of papers for filing?  I ignored it for months.  Okay, so maybe it was about half the year.  Big mistake!  HUGE!  (notice my nod to Pretty Woman there?) ☺️

Sorting those papers during the last days of school was a major headache. UGHHHH. I strongly encourage you to set aside some time each week to file papers away.  

I’m sure many of you now store most things digitally, which is awesome!  So you may be spending time organizing your drive rather than physical copies.  Either way, make sure to keep up on it.

As tempting as it is to rush out of school at the end of the day, try to spend 5-10 minutes straightening up your desk area.  It helps if your planning time is at the end of the day.  If not, you can do it right after dismissal.  I also like to wipe down my desk weekly with a cleaning spray.

Never forget how much students love to help you!  Even if it is a simple task like running a pile of papers to the recycle bin or organizing a tangled mess of paperclips, many students feel a huge sense of pride when they are allowed to help you.

Once or twice a year, you may need to spend a little longer and do a bigger desk refresh.  Sometimes I had long blocks of time on conference day, so I would use that time.

A Quick Recap of How to Organize Your Teacher Desk

Here are the steps one last time:

1. Start fresh by giving your desk a thorough cleaning

2. Sort the contents into piles

3. Select drawer organizers

4. Decide where to place items

5. Plan for papers by adding paper trays

6. Stage and style your desk by adding personal touches

7. Stay organized by doing daily, weekly, and yearly touch-ups

Now, don’t get me wrong.  You will have those terrible days where nothing goes right, and you turn around to see a hot mess on your desk.  If you need to, just go home.  Set an alarm to remind yourself to come in ten minutes early the next day, so you have time to handle it then.  

If you keep up with this system, your desk will be clean and organized all year long.  That will ease your stress and keep you on top of all of your important paperwork.  Bonus…you will even be modeling organization for your students.  Plus your personal space will be beautiful and welcoming when you arrive each day.

If you are looking for more tips on classroom set-up, check out this post.

Stay tuned for the next two installments in this blog post series.  Coming soon…organizing student materials.  You can hop on my email list to get notified anytime I drop a new post.  Just click here.  I’ll also send you my free guide to preparing for your teaching observation!

Thank you so much for being here. The teacher community is simply amazing!

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