It's Earth Month, so what better time to get your declutter on and go knee-deep-in reducing, reusing, and recycling!
I recently spent about 11 hours over the course of a weeekend doing just that--tho maybe more like neck-high-in!
My mission: to purge two 4-drawer file cabinets and a dozen tubs and boxes in my garage. Lighten up and make space.
The contents: 30+ years of teaching materials.
Having been a teacher since the fall of 1991 (with the exception of one year between schools where I was moving, pregnant, and having my first child), I've accumulated and created a lot of materials over the years. The majority of my career has been in homeroom classrooms in about 6 different elementary schools. Ten of the last 11 years, the majority of these teacher materials have been living in my garage--untouched as I moved from teaching 3rd grade (or 2nd... or Kindergarten... or 5th grade) to teaching Technology.
In this day and age, files are definitely more digital than anything, and it was time to "let go." No, not retiring yet, but my garage certainly was getting out of hand--just ask my husband! Plus I was settling on the answer of "no" to these questions: "Would I want to go back to a regular homeroom classroom? Would I ever use all of this again, even if I did?"
11 hours of purging about 33 years of materials gives you a lot of time to trip down memory lane. Upon pulling open the first file drawer, I had a pang. Did I really want to do this? I was thinking about the blood, sweat, toil, tears, and lamination/creation time I was about to get rid of. Yes, I'm doing this. It's time to reduce, reuse (via donation), and recycle!
7 garbage bags, 2 filled large yard lidded-recycle bins, at least a dozen bags and boxes of paper stacks of files to recycle, 20 or more dead binders that housed teaching units, and a half a dozen boxes of books to donate, I was in a lighter place.
Yes--I got to see windows into each and every school I have taught.
Yes--there's a lot of money that I have put into my teaching career.
The biggest yes--there's a lot of irony in recycling binders of environment and green school lesson plans a couple weeks before Earth Day. The "circularity" was striking, though maybe not picture perfect when describing the circular economy of true sustainability. But I did mentally hear the "Circle of Life" song from the Lion King going through my mind.
But, also yes--all of this served me at its time. It was there when I needed it. It all helped mold me into the teacher I am today.
And yes--some of the items (ditto copied resources and even transparency overlays from my early days in mid-1990s teaching) should have already been long gone. Maybe, just maybe, I've been an organized hoarder--or at least compiler of teaching materials. I was "curating" long before Pinterest even thought of it. Mine was just the file cabinet version.
The true moment of circularity for me came when my mission was completed and I realized there were far too many materials to put all out at the curb. Boxes of paper won't weather well when setting them out the night before an early trash/recycling pick up the next day. Given that, I loaded my dozen boxes into the back of the car and trekked to the local recycling center. Up and over the ledge into their bin all the boxes went.
A neat field trip we once took at the Maryland Green School I used to work at was to the local landfill and recycling center. I definitely flashed back as my files when floating in the bin.
Yes, full circle.
Graphic from https://www.pactcollective.org/pactresources/circularity, other images from my camera.
