Keeping Your Classroom Tidy (without doing it all yourself) 

A clean classroom doesn’t need to be a figment of your imagination. 

But it also doesn’t just happen…right? 

A day in an elementary classroom is filled with papers, markers, crayons, maybe some glue, science experiments, and potentially a craft or two. 

All of these activities and lessons tend to bring a mess with them. (Especially when you are doing them with 25+ children all at the same time 🤪). 

Here are four simple tips you can start using tomorrow that will make the dream of a tidy classroom your reality, without costing you hours each afternoon cleaning the floor after your students have hopped on the bus. 

Launch an End-of-Day Dismissal Routine

Add a simple routine (you can even call it a game 😉) to your end-of-day routine. 

Before students can line up at the end of the day, everyone helps clean up the floor. 

Here’s how it works: 

🔢 Let students know that in order to line up for dismissal, they need to pick up “X” number of items off the floor.

Maybe most of your days are a “5 things off the floor” day. 

But, if there was a big project, lots of games played in the afternoon, or a party (those days are always the messiest), you can up the number to “10”, “13”, or more! 

👀 Your students bring their “treasures” for you to see before lining up. 

This just provides some accountability so that everyone is grabbing things off of the floor instead of just Jimmy. 

🗑️ Students put away the items they found. Trash goes in the bin, and materials go back to their supply boxes. 

🎉 When students have picked up and shown you their items, they get to line up! 

This helps keep things snappy since everyone wants to be the first kid in line. 😊

Take five minutes at the end of the day to save yourself hours and enjoy a clean, peaceful room. ❤️

Create Classroom Jobs with a Cleaning Focus

Students LOVE being a part of the work going on in the classroom. 

Part of the work that needs to be done in the classroom is keeping things clean and tidy. 

So, let’s bring our students in to help accomplish these tasks! 

Here are some ideas to throw into your classroom job rotation: 

📚 Librarian 

This student places books back into the correct bins and keeps the library area in the classroom clean. 

🧽 Desk Wiper 

This job gets the honor of wiping down the desks at the end of the day, or passing out wipes for everyone to clean their desk quickly. 

🗃️ Supply Organizer 

Even with clear places for where things go, you sometimes need an extra set of eyes and hands to make sure the markers stay out of the crayon box. 

This job handles keeping all of the classroom supplies organized and where they should be. 

Modern Calm Colors Theme on the Left, Tropical Vibes Theme on the Right

Use a Classroom Jobs display to keep track of which student is doing which job. 

Rotate through the jobs every week or so to keep things fresh! 

I LOVE how this teacher simply wrote the number for her students underneath the job card. You can do that, or use Velcro dots to swap out name cards for your students! 

Establish “You Use It, You Tidy It” Culture

Cultivate a culture in your classroom where students know that when they grab a material to use, they need to make sure it gets put away. 

Have this be an expectation you set early in your classroom. Refer to and remind your students of this expectation often. 

Part of this means you need to make sure your students get comfortable with your classroom. This way they know where items go. 

You could have one of the first activities they do at the beginning of the school year be a “scavenger hunt” around the classroom! Have them find things like markers, crayons, card games, math manipulatives, hall passes, whiteboards, really anything you will be using often. 

Then, model, model, model. 

Show them what you expect picking up materials to look like and how you expect materials to be stored. 

If you want the textbooks stacked a certain way, show them how the cabinet should look once all the books are put away. 

Then, practice, practice, practice! Call students up to model what it shouldn’t look like, what it should look like, and then have everyone practice. 

Finally, stick with it over the course of the year. Take time to come back and practice again when you need it! 

Your students can help you make sure you all get to enjoy a clean classroom!  

Use Bins and Labels to Keep Everything in Place 

Sometimes, half of the battle for having a clean classroom is a lack of preparation. 

If someone doesn’t remember where something goes, they probably aren’t going to put it back where it should be. 

Use labels, or pictures if you need to, to make it easy for students to find and return items. 

These labels are a part of the Simply Neutral bundle.

Assign “supply monitors” to help you restock or organize the material bins each week. 

Finally, encourage all of your students to let you know when supplies are running low, out of place, or need to be replaced. 

Not only will using labels help your students know where things go, but it will be much easier for anyone else to walk into your classroom and not leave it a complete mess. 

This decor is from the Retro Groovy bundle.

It doesn’t matter what your storage situation looks like, you can always use labels to make things clearer and be an easy reminder for what goes where. 

Here are some great ideas on where to use labels in your classroom! 

Everyone functions better when they get to operate in a clean classroom. 

Which means all of your students can help be a part of the solution to helping you create a tidy learning space. 

Get started with these four tips, and you’ll start to find your own rhythm and routines that work great for your space and your kids!