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Need storage? These nifty seat sacks won’t break the budget

Oct 1, 2009 12:49 PM

Need storage? These nifty seat sacks won’t break the budget

Alas, Room 206 at Brooklyn’s PS 86 had no closets, shelving or even the kind of desks with lids where kids can stash their stuff. And 1st-grade teacher Clarice Yellen was not alone in her lack of storage areas. “Other kindergarten and 1st-grade classrooms have the same problem,” said Cynthia Monteleone, chapter leader of the cheerful Bushwick school that is about to turn 115 years old and has seen some of its generous old-fashioned spaces turned into classrooms. Probably there weren’t as many kids in 1894 and they didn’t have so much stuff. But must-haves for today’s modern tyke include crayons, books, notebooks, paper, pencils and a lot more. So the teachers and Principal Mabel Sarduy at the collaborative school put their heads together and came up with a spiffy idea. The seat sack. The clever creation, made of flame-retardant sturdy fabric, contains roomy well-designed pockets for plenty of storage and slides over the back of a chair without being bulky. They come in different sizes and colors and can even be personalized. To get seat-sack savvy, go to www.seatsack.com. The best deal, according to Monteleone, is the “classroom pack.”

Personalized or no, compared with building closets, buying desks and other solutions, “These are absolutely the cheapest alternative for storage problems,” Monteleone said.