Favorite Organization Tips for SLPs

The Frenzied SLPs have joined up again to bring you some favorite organizational tips!  If you really know me in real life and not just the pretty pictures I put up for you on here, then you know I am not organized.  I am a stacker, a notorious stacker.  On tables, on computer printers, on anything that basically doesn't move and has a horizontal surface.  I am not apologizing for this, just telling you this is real life.  I change groups every thirty minutes and I have about 54 kids on my caseload and I'm working on placing 2 more--so yeah, my day is slammed.  I organize when the kids leave (or after an infusion of Diet Coke).  

So, I may not organize as a rule, BUT I do SOME organizational things, so I guess that's basically the same thing.

I'm a visual learner so I included photos to help y'all see the vision. I also did not post my entire room because a girl has to have some skeletons in her speech room....

My Speech Room at the Elementary School

(Note the amazing bulletin board from Natalie Snyders' TPT store with "I Can" statements on display.  Yes, that is a burlap border.)  

Tip#1 Clean my therapy table everyday.  Yep this is a must-do. When my students say, "Umm, Mrs. Amy, I don't have anywhere to work because of all of your papers," there may be a problem!  I need to keep it tidy so my kids don't complain and my mental health is preserved.  Plus, it's flu season and I have to keep wiping my table to kill all of the yucks. 

Tip #2 Use student folders to keep work in (and save my sanity).

At the beginning of the school year I buy three prong folders with pockets in them (paper) that are on a serious big box store sale.  I have a product in my TPT store and I give them a cover to color and personalize.  We go over their goals for the year and keep all work that is in progress in the pockets of the folders.  They keep them here in the above baskets and when I pull my students (from 5K kids through 2nd graders) they immediately find their folder, get a crayon basket, and sit at my therapy table.   

Tip #3 Use a planner!  It doesn't have to cost a fortune or even be pretty (although I do like pretty).  Write down meetings, grocery lists, paid bills, when you turned in paperwork, new referrals, what's for supper--you get it everything.  Y'all I turned 40 in August and my memory is becoming so bad.  I do remember this from undergrad, "If you didn't document it, it never happened." So document it in the planner and you will feel so good when you look back and know it actually happened!  Erin Condren Planner

I hope this helps you in some way!  Have a great day!