How do you store your percussion items? Sticks/mallets/small auxilliary instruments? I feel like we have tried a LOT of ideas and nothing is working for my kids.
It's a disaster in the percussion room ALL THE TIME! I'm over it! I need simple and effective!
Re: Percussion Storage
Posted by Perc. Dir. on 3/8/2021, 3:44 pm, in reply to "Percussion Storage"
Luckily, I'm relatively handy with some 2x4s. I made storage racks for all of our large drums (battery, toms, snares, etc.) and made my own storage units for our "closets." I have lockable closets at both the JH and the HS that I custom built percussion storage for. We have a rolling cabinet that goes under a carpeted table with pegboard backing and another shelf on top. I made dividers to store cymbals as well. Each instrument has a "home" in either the cabinet or on the pegboard, and the mallets either go in the cabinet drawers, or hang from one of those wire closet shelves. I have dozens of mallets at the HS, and this is the best solution for our mallets that aren't in the stick bags of the corresponding instruments. Literally, each and every instrument has a place, and so does each and every mallet. I'm WAY ocd about organization, but it pays off. The biggest thing is you have to train your kids... and have consequences for not cleaning up. Start simple, but you need to enforce it.
Re: Percussion Storage
Posted by Victor Lara on 3/5/2021, 4:23 pm, in reply to "Percussion Storage"
Email me at vlara@flourbluffschools.net
Re: Percussion Storage
Posted by Get organized! on 3/5/2021, 1:24 pm, in reply to "Percussion Storage"
I have two more or less conventional percussion cabinets. Both have four drawers. Each drawer is LABELED on the outside with what goes in the drawer, with a TRACE and LABEL on the inside in paint sharpie of what goes in that spot in the drawer. Triangle? Goes in the "SMALL ACCESSORIES" drawer and put it on the TRIANGLE. Sticks go in the stick bag, which goes in the "SCHOOL STICKS" drawer. And so on.
That being said, percussion students are to put accessories and sticks away literally EVERY DAY. Absolutely NOTHING but snare, bass, school owned mallets, and timpani are left in the band hall. NO sticks. NO mallets. NOTHING that a passing-by random kid could pick up and beat on a drum with.
Do your clarinet players get to leave their clarinet out by their chair? Then neither do the percussionists get to leave out their equipment. If kids have a PERSONAL stick bag, they get a locker to store it in.
Make it idiot-proof. There will always be new idiots, but make it as SIMPLE and OBVIOUS as you can. Make it part of their daily grade to have their equipment and store it properly. Make everything have an obvious place where it belongs. And hold the expectations there every single day. Hold your kids accountable!
And finally, use this as an opportunity to develop leadership - make it a rotating job among your kids in each class to ensure everything's put away, and if it isn't, to let you know what was left out.
