Folder woes - a Made it edition!

Happy Labor Day friends!

Let me start out this Made it with a story... 

As most of you know, I have 25 little darlings in my class this year. I have a folder problem! In the past, my kids have turned their folder in on top of their lockers. Each kid has a number and the first thing they do in the morning is get their folder out and place it on top of their locker, under their number. They are assigned a locker alphabetically. Anytime they had work to turn in, they just laid it directly on top of their folders. This way it was easy for me to just go by and pick them up in alphabetical order - great for marking things off my checklist! I *love* this system. And then I didn't have to buy those expensive mailboxes from Office Depot.

See that awesome shelf in the picture??

 So, here's the problem: with 25 kids, there is no way that all of their folders will line up on that shelf! I had 20 kids at the most last year and even then they are a little tight. So I had to figure out another solution.

The room I moved into had mailboxes in it that I inherited. Thank goodness! I was not about to go spend $50 on them! So, I labeled them, my kids now know where theirs is and we turn work in there.

BUT - I still need their folders every day! We color in their behavior charts daily so parents know how their child's day was. I am seriously missing my old system, it was so easy to just walk down the row and open their folder and place anything that needed to be inside it.

I'm still in mourning.

So I was on a mission this weekend to find a good sized tub for my kids to put their folders in. I picked through Target and came up with a few great options, but I kept coming back to those Sterilite drawers. 

This way I can just slide them into a corner and don't have to have them out on top of a table somewhere. Of course, I couldn't just have plain ol' white Sterilite drawers. Here's where my Made it comes in! (I know you were anxiously awaiting it!)

 I decorated with scrapbook paper following the directions that Maria from Kinder-craze gives. 

Her tutorial is great! Because my kids are going to be in these every day, I didn't add paper to the sides - I thought this would get torn up really easily with all the use. I just taped the paper in - I don't have it secured perfectly yet because I'm going to go back and laminate the paper so it is a little more durable!

Here is a close-up of the girl's drawer:

And here is one of the boy's drawer:

I used the top and bottom so that the drawers could be open at the same time to slide folders into. We'll see how it goes tomorrow!

If you would like the labels on the drawers (you could slap these on any kind of tub!) here they are! I had to change the "boy's" and "girl's" font because I do not have a license to share that particular alphabet (it's called "Chillin" from Lettering Delights if you are interested) but this one is just as cute!

Now go check out all the other fabulous Made its on Tara's blog!