This project has been a long time in the works. And of course, we could kick ourselves for not taking a BEFORE photo. Not that the room was horrible but like many church workrooms, it can easily become a catch-all place for donated items, or items left scattered about after large events like VBS and things can get out of hand quickly. We wanted it to be more user-friendly and aesthetic when you walk in.

To begin, we removed all the upper cabinet doors to make better use of the space. Before it could be a guessing game as to what was behind each door and the containers did not fit well wasting too much space. We felt it opened up the room and increased the visibility of items on the shelves.

Next, we grouped all like-items: office accessories, paper goods, consumable craft items, manipulatives, visuals, etc. Then we purged. We found many old curriculum student workbooks, broken manipulatives, missing puzzle pieces, and old brittle visuals that were not usable. This allowed us to free up quite a bit of precious real estate in the workroom and provided the opportune time to do a good cleaning.

Once we knew exactly what we were working with this helped us to calculate how many and the size of storage bins to purchase. We purchased small shoe-box size to store craft consumable items, small manipulatives, small prizes, etc. Medium tubs store larger manipulatives and the large tubs store the bulky items or items we had an abundance of. (We had a ton of felt!)

To take things a step further the bins are even color-coded and labeled making it easier to visualize and find items. It also makes returning items much quicker too!

Our color code system:

Light Pink: craft consumables such as buttons, beads, velcro, googly eyes, etc

Hot Pink: consumable craft items such as paint, chalk, glue, ink pads and foam brushes etc.

Blue: small manipulatives such as game pieces, dice, and small prizes

Green: science or sensory items such as baking soda, eye droppers, food coloring, etc

We purchased cute editable labels from Etsy and gave each drawer or cabinet a number labeling the contents inside. They are large enough to be read across the room for easy reference and helped us determine zones for functionality. We also have a spreadsheet that alphabetizes the items referencing the number to make locating items super easy!

The tall bookshelves on the back wall house various idea books categorized with clear bins.

We are excited about our new large black filing cabinet in the back right corner. One of our next major projects is to sort all letter and legal sized visuals into this cabinet. (watch for a later post!)

Teacher church workroom — Left side of workroom

Our goal was to have the countertops as clear as possible allowing plenty of space for teachers to spread out while making copies and working on visuals. We also designated a large donation bin with a lid by the door allowing people to drop donated items in there so that it doesn’t take up precious counterspace. The bin can be checked frequently and items, if usable can be homed quickly throughout the workroom.

We have a large bulletin board space above our laminator housing a clipboard with supply/communication requests, lamination guidelines and a QR code for checkout. (More to come on that later)

There is an additional smaller room off of the large workroom. This made it nice, because as we worked on organizing this room, items we were either unsure what to do with got moved in there temporarily. We will do a follow-up post showing the smaller room as it is still in the process of being completed! It will house our larger pre-made visuals and curriculum.

Happy Teaching Friends!

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