Dollar Tree Finds- Take 1

Camera cord? Check! My goodness, this post has been a little pill. I finally get my pictures ready and blogger decides to be testy. Sheesh! Anyway, I am very excited to tell you about this Dollar Tree find- the 5 Pocket Organizer. It looks like this



I bought black because it was the only one they had left at the time. The first time I came across this, they had black, dark blue, even a deep green. I should have picked them up then, I just wasn't sure what I was going to do with them.


This year I vow to be much more organized with MY things. I work so hard to give student's a place to keep their things nice and neat, but everyday I'm scrambling to find my misplaced keys before recess. Honestly, I can't tell you how many times I sent a sweet little kid to my room at recess to track down my sunglasses. Oh, and that recess whistle lasted a whole day. It must have fallen in the black hole of K3.

Okay, so to do this I used the organizer, a glue stick, double sided tape, some extra dicut thingies I had laying around, scissors, and two Command hooks.


The hooks are not required. The organizer comes with a string tied to help it hang. I didn't want my organizer to swing around. So, I untied the knot and pulled the string out. (As you can see in the second picture.) Command has some really nice colorful hooks that were very tempting. You'll notice the grommet holes are not that big, that's why I went with these command hooks with thinner hooks.

If you are using Command (or other hooks), go ahead and put them on the wall before you make your organizer all sweet looking. It says it needs an hour to bond to the wall, that was very hard for me to do. I'm a tad impatient and want to see results!

Okay, to start I figured out which dicuts I was going to use. I went ahead and laminated them. Then, I printed labels on regular paper. It would have been smart to print the labels on sticky label paper- thought of that later of course. So my labels are: sunglasses, keys and whistle, nurse pass, bandaids, and I left the green star blank. I'm sure I'll think of something to put in there.

One of the benefits of adding the labels with a glue stick is I can pull it off. I may end up using this organizer next year for something completely different.

Alright, this is where I had to think. I was trying to decide if I should slip the label inside the pocket, or leave the label on the outside. I experimented both ways. In the end, I decided to put the pretty stars on the outside. They got crushed when I slipped them inside. This decision is totally up to you!

Whip out the double sided tape and don't be shy! I put about 4 pieces on the big star, and two long pieces on my top square pieces.

This is what I ended up with. It's pretty low on the wall and right by the door so I can grab things on my way out. It bothers me that the hook on the left is a bit crooked. Maybe I will tie some zebra ribbon around the hooks to hide. That could look good.

Let me know what you think! But before I go, here are a couple of other great items I found on my trip to the dollar store.

Stackable blue bins- LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. The other colors are red, green, and I think black. They also had other stackable bins that were just a smidge bigger.

My favorite of all: BLING! I bought this package because it has several colors. I also bought a package of clear stones. I've used this to bling up some of my letters on the word wall (those vowels of course) and for my Wall of Fame. Fun!

Okay, I'm adding my spinner post next. Stay tuned!