December 6, 2014

Bulletin Board Borders – ORGANIZED!!

I was working on a bulletin board recently and was frustrated with how all my bulletin board borders and extras were stored. I was looking for one more piece of the colorful star borders but I just couldn’t find it. It looked like the borders had exploded. Those little colorful pieces of paper were all over the place and nothing seemed to stack/stay/sort the right way. It’s not easy to store those borders or to keep them organized even if you just have two or three options.

When you hoard bulletin board supplies like I do, you have a lot of different colors/shapes/styles to sort through and manage. The way I had things organized was not working. If you moved one pile they all moved and those wavy-edges are not really the easiest things to line up for convenient stacking. Even when you could stack them they didn’t stay together very well. My inner organizer was freaking out a little bit.

There had to be some little tricks and ideas to keep this place organized. I stood back, took some deep breaths, and started to form a strategy. If nothing else, I need to be able to see the resources I have and quickly sort through to find the right thing. If a greater storage/sorting system can be utilized, all the better! Here are a couple little things that I did to keep my borders a little more organized and keep the closet less cluttered.

Clip Them and Keep Them

First of all (and I know this goes against everything I ever say about “evaluate what you have and don’t turn into a hoarder teacher,” but…), never throw away bulletin board borders. You can use them any time and they really don’t take up much space. Get them for cheap at the Dollar Tree and absolutely don’t pay any outrageous prices for something at Hobby Lobby or Michaels unless you really really need that specific style of border for an EXTRA fancy occasion. The border should be the border, not center stage. Avoid the Michael’s/Hobby Lobby trap of buying the expensive stuff. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

[su_spacer size=”20″]That said, storing these little puppies can be a pain. They really don’t stack up well and winding and rolling them can also be a hassle. I’ll admit that when I first started buying and storing these little guys I didn’t have a very good system. I would rubber band them together which would either be too loose or would be too tight and crease the borders. See the photos above for pictorial evidence of the rubber band failure. I finally wised up and brought out the binder clips. These handy little clips will keep all your border together and will not let any slip out (Unlike paper clips. Seriously, the binder clips outrank the paper clips here.).

Tips and Tricks to help keep your bulletin board borders organized

I’m lucky to have “instrument storage” lockers in my music classroom. I don’t know if they assumed when they built this wing of the building that our strings students would store instruments here or that the music room would have more instruments than we do. Whatever the reason, I have long narrow cubbies in my closet that I get to use for whatever I want. They’re sort of perfect for laying out even the longest borders and make storage pretty easy. Once the borders were clipped together they stayed in place and made sifting through and finding the right thing a breeze!

This is a quick and easy way to keep borders organized and out of the way.

I know that not everyone has the luxury of these instrument lockers or some other space where you can lay out your borders. There is a better way than rolling up or hiding them above your ceiling drop panels or whatever it is that you might be tempted to do! I found this great idea on Pinterest that many of you might have already seen. Notice the binder clips in action? Notice how easy this would be? You could put these on a non-used section of wall or the back of a closet door or something else. So many options!

Staple through your border roll to keep it from unraveling.

And one more idea! I know that some of you have probably bought those rolls of plain colored borders from Hobby Lobby or Michaels that come in a big roll and are sort of like a corrugated cardboard texture. Those are a PAIN to keep in one big roll once you’ve taken them down off the wall. I always roll mine up and have tried to band them, clip them, and magic wand them together. Then I realized that I could just staple them closed. I staple them to my bulletin board, why not just use a quick little staple to keep them rolled up and together? Easy peasey!

I hope these little ideas help a bit! I know it’s a constant struggle to keep all of the STUFF in your room organized and usable. This quick clean up took me 10 minutes MAX and now I’m able to find whatever I need quickly. Let me know what your bulletin board organization tips are with a comment below.

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