Teacher Hoarding

Teacher Hoarding: You don't realize how much you have

by Colleen Guzman

          The school year had ended and it was time to come home for the summer. Most of my things I leave at school in my classroom but this year I changed rooms and I wasn't sure where I wanted to go with my new room and there are some things that I always bring home just because I don't want them to be broken or end up missing. I also have a whole room of school related items that I use throughout the year, or much of it I thinking I am going to use for one thing or another or I'm saving it for that one day when I switch from Middle School to Elementary school. The items I have at home are in shelves so those stay fairly organized but each summer I bring things home from my classroom I have to reorganize everything and make space for everything. This is not even counting what I will buy when back to school shopping begins.

          I'm not sure about you but once I am done with a school year I am exhausted, my brain, emotions and body are worn thin so adding more to my plate is the last thing I want to do. I can also admit though that every summer I know the cleaning and organizing are coming because to be completely honest, during the school year I only clean my house during Thanksgiving break, Christmas break, and Spring break so by summer there is major cleaning that needs to be done. Summer is when I move all the furniture and sweep and mop underneath them. I go through all of the closets and get rid of the old unused clothes. I venture into my son's rooms and do some massive cleaning in there. (Two of our three sons still live at home, they are currently 18 and 19 so their understanding of cleanliness is not the same as mine) So as you can see I have plenty of things to do over the summer so why am I dragging things home to add another chore for myself? I just have to have my classroom be organized because classroom chaos can lead to me being chaotic and I don't prefer that.

           I took pictures of the disaster that my house becomes when I drag all these things home and because I wanted to blog about this whole process and I'm not sure if it was the pictures, my fatigue, going back to college and having summer classes or what but this summer I was paralyzed by this disaster. You couldn't see my dining room table or my breakfast nook table or some of my counter space in the kitchen. Each time I walked past these disasters I felt a panic attack rising and so I began to turn a blind eye to all of it. Well since I was ignoring the disaster the men in my household decided that this was their cue to add to the insanity so my dining table became a dumping ground. Then I had to create a grass collection for my Master's program, add to my former tree collection and wildflower collection so there were grasses and foam boards and adhesive and tree leaves and wildlfowers all over the table along with the other mess. I had finally had enough so I began to clean and organize, starting with that that dining room table. Once the dining room table was clean I began to feel much better and I was able to move on to other rooms.

          I have found when organizing and working on my house that once I am moving along I am able to keep moving along but if I let the things pile up I feel more overwhelmed by them and then I drag my feet and struggle with getting going. Once I had the dining table cleaned I was able to work in the breakfast nook that my youngest son and I now call our office. Since everyone is older they no longer come eat breakfast in the morning before school and my husband and I use the dining room if we even eat at home so using the breakfast nook as an office seemed like a good idea. We left the table in there so we can work on it and then we added in shelving units, fabric drawers, plastic bins, etc. to keep things separated and organized. I am a huge reader on top of everything else so one full bookcase is mostly books. I have Ripley's Believe it of not books and cartoon books that I only bring to school during STAAR testing so the students have something new and interesting to read. The other books are more for use when I have an elementary class so they stay at home. I leave my science books and Middle School books like Goosebumps at school. I have another bookcase that I use for supplies like folders, colored paper, composition books, markers, classroom

decorations, etc. I have a box of classroom decorations that I leave at school too such as borders, pre-cut letters, small posters, basically things that I will use to make a bulletin board so for me it seemed smarter to keep those things at school. I also have a shelving unit where I keep my glue, paints, index cards, and crafting items. Plus my youngest son uses the space for his entomology so he is pinning bugs, researching bugs,making collections and planning things out. He has several large collections that he has taken to state but he likes to change the insects around in the collections. The collections stay on the table at all times, mainly because we don't have any more shelf space to use. I am thinking that this year I should take more things to school and use them all up before I buy new things, it is just so difficult to leave glue and markers and pencils behind when they are on sale or items that I think I may use some day. Since this blog post has gotten incredibly long I think those are things I am going to have to revisit once I go shopping for school supplies. I will keep everyone posted on how I do with my teacher hoarding.

 Hopefully for now this shows that I was able to bring in all the things I brought from my classroom and I was able to organize all of them into the space I already have. As you can see I have quite the teacher hoard going but I surely hope that It all ends up being things I truly use and that I can continue to keep it organized in the space I have. I never want to be in a place where I am getting a storage space for all of my things, and I never want to have so many things that I am not in a place where I can use them. Those are my goals, so let's see how I do with those.