Storage Ideas for Center Materials

Denise here from Sunny Days! I don’t think I’m alone when I tell you that I sometimes struggle with center storage. Today I’m going to share two ideas that have been working pretty well for me lately.

Last year, I started to store centers that I would frequently rotate in and out in a 5-inch three ring binder with heavy duty plastic pocket dividers.

Here’s a visual before we move on. {Now if this was Charity, there would be a fancy video. But I’m not nearly as photogenic (videogenic?) as our fairy blogmother…}

One feature I love here is that my teammates can borrow an entire center just by removing a plastic pocket. I added a check-out sheet in the front just to keep track of who has what.

This system works particularly well for centers that are flat, like task cards or games without three-dimentional pieces. You can see that the center with the clothespins is really making the binder bulge, which is a bit of a drawback if you have centers with lots of bigger pieces.

That brings me to center storage solution #2 – Cardboard file boxes:

I purchased these in Ikea with the intention of using them as student book boxes, but they weren’t quite as sturdy for that purpose. However, they’re perfect as storage.

This solution works great for bulkier items, odd sized pieces and student examples. I’ve actually started using them to group centers or projects by theme, like measurement. This way, I can pull one box out of the closet and have everything for a theme at my fingertips.

This method also works great for sharing across my team since they can now take the whole box. I have a check out sheet for these on the inside of my closet door.

I store them with the back facing out – it just looks a little neater to me when I open the closet door. I think I may look for boxes that match my room a bit more and keep them on my open shelving this way next year.

I’ve got some labels to share with you for the file boxes. I know you probably need different ones than I do, so I made them pretty generic and included some blank ones that you can write on.

You can get those labels {here}.

If you’re interested in a basic center check out sheet for your team, you can get that {here}.

Enjoy my friends and I’ll see you next month!