Holy Paintbrushes Batman!

As I have been teaching, between classes, before and after school, I have been trying to clean/organize my new classrooms so they are easy to use and also to know what supplies I have.

The other day I did my best to tackel anything that had to do with painting - so all the cupboards around the sink area, a LARGE grey cabinet and half of another cabinet were filled with brushes, acrylic paint, tempra paint, finger paint, watercolors, tempra cakes, washable paint... the list goes on.

Ahh! Holy Paintbrushes Batman!

I pulled out EVERYTHING and set it out on tables - trying to group like materials together.  When I emptied out everything I found that I have the largest and most diverse set of paintbrushes I've ever seen in an elementary room before!  It was a beautiful sight to see them all squished on the table together - most of them have never been used.  The only SMALL issue with having this many paint brushes is where to put them all - okay so it wasn't the quantity that made it difficult to put way it was the different sizes.  There were ALOT of long handled brushes that just wouldn't fit in the cupboard without me taking out the shelf, but if I took out the shelf then all the paintbrushes wouldn't fit in the same cupboard anyway.  Alas, after much thinking and problem solving I put the most commonly used short handle brushes in the cupboards by the sink and put all the long handled brushes in another cupboard across the room.  I really don't like to split up supplies, because I tend to forget I have them, but short of hauling the board home - chopping it in half then re-supporting it, I had no other choices.

Not only did I find copious amounts of brushes, but I found that a lot of my paint supply was ruined and had to be thrown out.  Either some of the paint had frozen at one point or had been there sooooo long that the tempra and washable paints had not only separated, but the paint was a firm, almost dried out, hunk of paint.  I did my best to try and remix it - but it didn't happen.  So full, unopened paint was thrown into the trash - painful.


At the end of a few hours my cupboards looked clean, usable, and far less overwhelming.  The one cupboard that is not open did not get cleaned out because a mouse had/has been living in there - poop EVERYWHERE and I just didn't feel the urge to clean it out at that moment.  Another day, with some gloves and disinfectent.