the day the headphones took over.

There I was, humming happily as I cleaned out excess materials we haven't used and won't use in the upcoming THREE weeks. The lima beans from our plant study needed to take up residence in the trash can, the Valentine's hearts were being bagged and stored for 2-14-13. Talk about heaven on earth. Well, hello there, Mr. UPS Man, what's that you say? A package for me? Two boxes worth of items? Yes, you know it's May? So you know that I'm cleaning OUT, not storing UP? Well that's unfortunate.

Here's what "Brown did for me":

That's right, twenty pairs of fabulously bubble wrapped headphones. Headphones as far as the eye can see:

Please hear me - I'm not at ALL complaining that I received these headphones. Our team has been dying for a class set of headphones so that the kids really can use laptops individually and not have to constantly remind their neighbor to press their "music down" button. I was so thankful for the shipment, just not so thankful for the timing {slash} realization that I didn't have anywhere to put the headphones.

When I was brainstorming places to store the headphones, I knew they needed to be in a place that was easily accessible to the kids. I also wanted them stored relatively close to the laptops, so the kids could grab a pair of headphones as they grabbed a laptop. Thirdly, I wanted to keep the storage containers small so that we didn't have a huge, massive pile of headphone cord confusion. If only a few pairs of headphones are stored in each tub, there's less of a chance for tangle tizzies.

Luckily, I had some leftover shoe containers from Wal-Mart in my storage cabinet, and I found that five of them would fit perfectly on top of our laptop cart! {check off "easily accessible to the kids and close to the laptops"}

Each tub holds exactly four sets of headphones, minimizing cord confusion. {check off "avoid tangled tizzy"}

Within the tubs, I alternated storing the headphones upside-down and right-side-up so that they would fit snuggly, but are still easy for the kids to grab and move on.

Each tub is also adorned with a label that not only exposes the kids to a bit more vocabulary and spelling, but has a picture to support friends that need it. {check off "perfect for the itties!"}

• Mr. UPS Man tried to conquer me with his large shipment, but it only took about 25 minutes to tackle the project and tuck away our new treasures.
• The headphones are in the perfect spot for the muffins: they can reach them easily, and they are in plain sight so the kids will know to grab them when they grab a laptop.
• This storage system didn't require any additional space, it just required me to use the space I already had at my disposal!

18 days, y'all.