Career Life
It’s a safe bet that most teachers value productivity. Our days are so crammed full of tasks that it’s important to maximize every second in our workdays. However, there are often times during the day when I have five or ten spare minutes in front of me. That’s not enough time to really settle into a new project, so I end up just wasting them. However, I’ve started filling those random spare minutes with decluttering tasks. It’s been a game-changer for me to think about ways to use those mini-moments to check something off my to-do list.
20 quick and easy decluttering tasks teachers can do in under 5 minutes
- Unsubscribe from emails – If you’re like me, those prom orders and professional development opportunities get you placed on email subscription lists, which clutter your inbox with junk mail. Use a spare minute to unsubscribe from newsletters you don’t read. You can check out unenroll.me, a service that does it for you.
- Sharpen pencils – Countless pencils need sharpened all day, every day. Use your break time to check this off the list. Toss the stubs and damaged pencils while you’re at it.
- Write your to-do list – Take five minutes to write in your planner. This means writing out the week’s to-do list, scheduling tasks on the calendar, and taking a moment to figure out your goals for the day.
- Wipe down your desk surface – Clear off your desk and use a sanitizing wipe to clean every surface, including your mouse, keyboard, and pencil cup.
- Respond to emails– Especially in our era of online teaching, the emails are roaring in fast and furious. Five minutes of your time is enough to respond to one, two, or even three emails.
- Straighten desks – Ah, the never-ending job that is putting the rows of desks back in order. It only takes five minutes!
- Test whiteboard markers and pens – throw out the ones that are empty – This is a great job for student aids, too.
- Clean out your teacher bag – One time I found my Christmas list in my teacher bag in April. Don’t be like me.
- Empty your computer recycle bin – Throw those computer files away once and for all to clear up some space on your hard drive.
- Clean up your computer desktop – Decluttering tasks extend to our technology, too! Delete random PDFs, files, photos, and icons that are cluttering your desktop. You will feel so much better looking at a screen with less “stuff” on it.
- Grade an essay – You probably can’t make it through an entire stack of grading in five minutes (if you can, teach me your ways) but you can grade a single essay or project or quiz. That’s one less you have to do later.
- Tidy bookshelves – Books have a way of scattering themselves around my classroom. I take a few minutes at the end of each day to reshelve them where they belong.
- Change the date on your whiteboard – This is a great first task for every morning.
- Update your Bitmoji classroom for the season – Now that we are virtual, my Bitmoji classroom has replaced my regular classroom. I decorated it with pumpkins for Halloween, a cornucopia for Thanksgiving, and snowdrifts out the window for winter.
- Change the clothes on your teacher Bitmoji – While you’re at it, you can change the outfits of your Bitmoji daily, weekly, or seasonally.
- Hand back work – If you’re looking for a five-minute task while you have downtime while teaching, grab some graded work to hand back.
- Make copies – A daily job, but it has to be done and only takes a few minutes. (That’s as long as you avoided the dreaded paper jam!)
- File documents – Deal with those endless piles of papers by throwing away the ones you don’t need. File the ones you do.
- Clean out and organize one desk drawer – Empty it completely out, throw away what you don’t need, organize the rest.
- Fill out forms – The forms never seem to end. It only takes five minutes to fill out a few detention slips, referrals, reimbursement requests, and POs.
There you have it – 20 decluttering tasks that will take you five minutes or less! Maximize every moment of your workday so you can leave it behind when the final bell rings.
