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In this pencil case organization video I show you how to organize your pencil case if you’re in middle school or high school and also how to organize your pencil box if you’re in elementary school! What back to school supplies do you keep in your pencil case?! Leave a comment below with your best school supplies organizing tips!

If you’re ready to start getting organized, you can check out my free organizing video series, 3 Small Things To Do Tonight To Feel More Organized Tomorrow!

How to Organize Your Pencil Case

Hi everyone. It’s Alejandra. And in this video, I’m going to show you how to organize your pencil case. So I have two pencil cases in front of me. I have this one. This is for somebody who’s like in middle school or high school. And then I have a pencil box, which is for someone who is in elementary school. So I’m going to show you both options. I’m going to show you what’s inside and how to keep it organized.

So these are the two pencil cases. So first, I’m going to show you the middle school/high school pencil case and then I’ll show you the elementary school pencil case. OK. So, this pencil case, I got this from Target and I feel like this is just like such great quality. It’s not made of plastic. It’s like – what is this? I forget what this material is but – what is it? Oh, it’s mesh. OK. Yeah, I guess it’s like a mesh. But it has – I don’t know. It just feels like it’s really a great quality and it has a nice zipper and I think it was $2.29 at Target.

How to Keep Your Pencil Case Organized

Well actually, before I show you what’s inside, let’s just talk about how to keep this organized. So what you want to do here is only keep the things that you absolutely need, absolutely use inside your pencil case, nothing more, nothing less. You don’t want to keep anything more because it’s just going to weigh down your pencil case which is going to weigh down your backpack and you’re going to be carrying unnecessary weight.

And then also, what you want to do is go through your pencil case every once in a while, maybe it’s like every week or every month or something and take out the things that you’re not using whether trash that ends up in here or things that just don’t belong in here. So go through that and purge your pencil case every so often.

Organizing a Middle/High School Pencil Case

Organizing Your Pencil Case

Organizing Your Pencil Case

Now, let’s see what’s inside. First thing is a protractor. So, if I was in Math class, I would keep a protractor. So yeah, so that’s in there. A compass, now I feel like when I was in Math in like middle school or high school, we only used a protractor and compass like every so often, not very often. I don’t know. I don’t really fully remember. But if you know you’re not going to be using these things for a while, take them out so they don’t weigh you down.

OK. Mini-colored pencils. So I feel like when I was in middle school or high school, I used colored pencils but I didn’t use them that often. So I feel like carrying the mini size which are smaller, less weight is better than carrying the full size if you’re not using colored pencils that often. So I got mini-colored pencils and I them out of the bulky box and I put them inside a small Ziploc bag just like this so they don’t just get everywhere. So yeah, small Ziploc bag.

Next two things, two highlighters. So I love using yellow highlighters because they’re light in color. I feel like the pink is always darker but it’s nice to have two different colors on hand if you’re doing some type of activity where you need two different colors. I like the pen Hi-Liters like the smaller ones because I feel like when you highlight something, it doesn’t accidentally highlight two lines. It only highlights one line. So yeah, so two highlighters.

A thing of sticky notes. So this is – I like this kind because the whole thing is sticky with the exception of this little tab right here. This tab is not sticky but all this is sticky. So it’s great to put on your notebook to flag a page and then what I always do is I write the subject or I write something up here to remember what those notes are. So when I’m just like picking up my notebook, I can see all the tabs and see what the note is. So anyways, these are just like pretty colors so I picked those.

I feel like you always need a black Sharpie marker in your pencil case and some other type of color. So yeah, I like these ones. I like the Ultra Fine Point Sharpies just because I feel like they don’t always go through the paper that’s why I like them.

Next thing is a bag of reinforcements. So I feel like – well, you just keep reinforcements not inside of a plastic bag, they always peel off the page and end up like inside your pencil case or on your calculator or something. So we put them inside a Ziploc bag. It’s going to contain them and it’s going to keep them nice and neat inside the bag. And when they don’t fall off, you don’t waste them.

Sushi Stapler

Next is a mini stapler. So I showed this in another video and everyone – not everyone but a lot of people asked where did I get this because it’s o cute. It’s a piece of sushi. I got it in a novelty store in Virginia. If you just go online, I think Amazon sells them. If you Google or Amazon search mini sushi stapler, you’ll find it. But I feel like it’s great to carry a mini stapler because it’s not – a lot of times you need a stapler and there’s not one in the classroom or there’s only one in the classroom and it’s just nice to have your own. Now, you can keep it in your locker if you’re not using it very often. You don’t have to keep it in the pencil case.

Another marker that I forgot to talk about.

A calculator, so you always need a calculator. Yeah, here’s my TI83 I think. And that is it. Oh, here’s the pencil from my compass. Oh, I forgot to put a pencil in here. Actually, I think there was a pencil in here. I don’t know what happened to it. But I had a pencil in here. But yeah, that was everything that I had inside of my middle school/high school pencil case.

Organizing an Elementary Student’s Pencil Case

So now, let me show you what’s inside my elementary school box. OK. So this is my elementary school supply box. I’m going to show you exactly what’s inside. So when I was putting this video together or putting this school box together, I was looking at different school supply list from where I live to kind of put together all the common denominator items to have a complete school box. So all the stuff here is all stuff from school supply lists in elementary schools in my area.

So the first thing I did here was I labeled the outside of the school box with my name, my phone number, and my email address so if I was a student, in case this pencil box got lost, my name would be on it so whoever found it could easily return it to me and I wouldn’t have to lose my whole pencil box. So if you’re a parent watching this video, I would label your child’s backpack, their jacket, and their lunch box, and their school box with their name and probably their binder also or folders.

So in case it does get lost, the person knows where to return it. And if you’re going to label like the backpack or the jacket or anything with fabric, you can use a fabric label and you could either iron it on or you can sew it on. So they make fabric labels for labeling clothing and stuff.

Organizing an Elementary Student's Pencil Case

Organizing an Elementary Student’s Pencil Case

So let’s just take a look at what’s inside. So this school box is from Target. I don’t remember – I think it was like $1.50 or something. But you can find school boxes everywhere. OK. So the first thing is a box of 24 crayons. I keep them in a box just because I feel like they’re more contained in the box as opposed to just floating around inside the school box. Now, if they don’t fit in here, you can always just keep it on top and then your child just slips it inside their desks or inside their cabbies. So it doesn’t have to be inside the box.

OK. The next thing is 5-inch scissors just like that. They’re student scissors.

A 3” x 3” pad of sticky notes, so I just choose blue. I kind of used what I had around the house instead of going out and buying new stuff. So I just had blue.

A highlighter, so I always like using highlighter like explained because it doesn’t like hide the texts. It’s nice and light.

In all the school supply lists I saw or most of them, it said to have a red pen, a black pen, and a blue pen. So I just got three pens.

Two Ticonderoga wooden pencils. So Ticonderoga is like the best wooden pencil. It just writes really smoothly and it has a nice clean eraser. I think depending upon when I’m posting this video, in my Target haul video, I showed that Target sells bright colored pencils so if you want to make it more fun for your child, you can get the bright, neon color Ticonderoga pencils. They’re only at Target.

OK. In all the supply lists, they mentioned to have two dry-erase markers so I have a blue one then I have a black one.

A glue stick, so the lists that I was looking at, it said to only get the clear glue, not – this is the purple glue. But again, I just with what I had around the house. But it said, don’t get purple, don’t get blue, don’t get sparkly, only get clear. So anyways, that is purple.

Color Pencils

Colored pencils, so I took the colored pencils out of the box because I felt like the box is kind of bulky unlike the crayon box. Then I felt like it was just easier and there are only 12 and stuff so I took them out of the box and just put them in the pencil. So these are kind of nice. They are erasable. I’ve not tried them out so I don’t know how well they erased but they are nice because they do erase.

The next thing is a pack of eight washable markers in the classic colors. So I felt like the bold colors and some of the other colors were more fun but all the lists I was looking at, specified to get the classic colors. So these are the classic colors.

And then the last thing is a pink eraser for erasing.

So that’s everything inside the elementary school supply box. One other thing that I would tell your child or kind of get them in the routine of doing is going through their pencil box like every month or something and making sure that there’s no trash inside, there’s nothing else besides the supplies that I just went through.

So for example, if they have like if they wrote on the sticky note and they messed up and there is like just paper inside just like that. Make sure you tell them, “Every month, go through and pull those things that don’t belong in there so you make sure you only have the things that do belong.” Now, that might hard because most elementary school students are probably keeping their pencil box inside their desks in the classroom and not bringing it home in their backpack so you kind of might have to tell them or show them once or twice what to do and then yeah, just keep reminding them to do that every month or so often.

So I hope you found this video helpful. If you want more organizing tips for back to school, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel or visit my website at Alejandra.TV. And I will see you soon. Bye!

About Alejandra

About Alejandra

Since 2008, organizing expert & certified life coach, Alejandra Costello has taught thousands of students in 132 countries how to get organized through her video-based training programs. Her YouTube videos have been viewed 100+ million times. Named 1 of the 5 most organized people in America by HGTV and “The Decluttering Queen” by Good Morning America, Alejandra’s expertise has been featured in The New York Times, Oprah.com, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Good Housekeeping, Family Circle, Woman’s Day, Parents Magazine, and CBS. 

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