About a week ago, I got an idea.

My sister had been in Staples and found that they had binders on sale for some ridiculously low price, so she bought me 12. Twelve binders. Normal people might’ve been like, “What in the world am I supposed to do with twelve binders?” but not me. I was thrilled. (They’re also pink and green and super cute.)

I’ve already moved the contents of most of my binders into these new ones. But I do have some left over, and while trying to decide what to do with them, I came up with the idea of a reference binder.

I have SO MANY papers in the reading drawer of my file cabinet. There are file folders for novel studies, standards, specific skills, and even one for pretty stationery. I mean, there’s a lot of junk piled in there.

So last week, while we had half day workdays, I spent time organizing. I organized all of the papers in my drawer, sorting them into the right folders. Then, I made a copy of each page. These copies are going into a reference binder. In that binder, I have all of my papers organized alphabetically by skill. I also divided them using those alphabet dividers. So now, when I’m doing lesson plans, I can just bring that reference binder home and I’ll know exactly what I have for each skill. There were so many great things that I’d forgotten that I had; now, I’ll know what’s there, and I’ll remember to use it!