There’s a whole lot of stuff that goes into being a band director. And the problem with having a whole lot of stuff is knowing what to do with it! My old classroom didn’t have any built-in storage and was quite literally a big box with four crooked walls, so I had to get very creative when it came to storage. We didn’t have a PTO at my old school and there was money, but sometimes I would just run out and grab something because it could take forever to get the PTO, make the order and then actually get the item. Especially when it was so much faster to just go to Walmart or Amazon.
I am not sponsored, and these are not affiliate links. I just sincerely loved the solutions that these products offered to me when I was at my old school and I actually left all of it at my old school for the new person to use because I managed to increase the inventory by a lot!
Reed Storage Solutions
To organize all the reeds that we purchase for the students I bought the plastic three drawer dressers made by Sterilite. I designated one drawer per instrument and either placed a smaller container in the drawer to separate reeds by hardness or I kept the numbers face up on the reed box so that we could find the correct reed super fast.
I don’t have a picture of the reed storage because I don’t teach at that school anymore, but it looks very similar to the mallet storage described below.
Mallet Storage Solutions
To organize mallets I got the wide three drawer dressers made by Sterilite. Each drawer was labeled with a different instrument and those mallets were returned to that drawer at the end of class each day (sometimes). Some of your students need you to take the extra step to label mallet bags and drawers for them. I have sets of labels coming to the Tpt shop super soon. They will be added to classroom decor sets so that they match the rest of the decor you need for your band room.
Mallet Practice Pad Storage Solutions
Mallet practice pads are a wonderful way for students to practice developing muscle memory. I got mine from Digital Performance Gear. I loved having these for my percussionists because you can get them printed with and without note names (I recommend note names for your beginners) and they are the exact same size as all your percussion instruments. But when they came in I had nowhere to store them and they became awkward very quickly.
Then I grabbed a vinyl storage organizer thing from amazon and I slipped all the practice pads in and now they are tucked behind a door and stay against the wall and take up otherwise unusable space.
Displaced Pedagogy 