I went to school today again to begin unpacking before my trip. I tried to get as much done as possible. Ideally, I’d be in there every day this week doing something, but I just don’t think I should focus my energy on that when I have a big trip coming up and I will have time to work in my room when I get back…at least 5 days. I can totally work with that. So today I just did as much as I could until I got kicked out. Our building engineer and custodial staff are pretty amazing, especially for letting me be in there at a time when it’s “their time” and teachers technically aren’t supposed to be in the buildings. But they are very understanding. And I am not a jerk to them either. That should be obvious for teachers. You know? Clean up after yourself, throw out your own giant pile of recycle boxes, give them some cookies every now and then, and say thank you a million times. I will definitely get them a little something in the Pacific Northwest. 🙂

Last week I drew a plan up of the room. A sort of blue print for the furniture. I knew I had to do that first, and get the furniture in place, otherwise I would feel like my room was lacking the scaffolding. OCD like that. So drawing it out first was a good idea. I only excluded two pieces of furniture another teacher was going to give. May still try something out with other shelves if I can get some… or maybe still the pieces from the other teacher. What’s important is that my stuff has a placement, a niche, and a nugget of space to occupy that feels right for now.

So my next step I thought would be to start putting things away into my huge closet. I did the Art of Education online summer conference thingy and one of the first video segments was about organizing your closet space, which I though would help me. What I realized today is that it would only help me if my closet was already filled with stuff. Today I walked into a room of boxes on top of boxes in no particular order. And it’s just me in there. So the only way I know how to tackle these things is one at a time. I just start moving the boxes to where I think I may want them. Some things I put on the shelf, knowing that it may very well not stay there but it can’t be on the floor if I am going to maneuver around. Some boxes I leave on my table that I ended up just randomly filling with stuff at the end of last year in the midst of heat exhaustion and needing to hurry the heck up.  This whole process feels disorganized and icky to me. I know in the long run it will be fine, but right now it is an organizational nightmare for me. I will be moving the same objects around from at least three different spaces, I just know it. Everywhere is temporary and I hate that feeling. I just need everything out of the boxes and in neat little piles so I can put them away. I also need boxes/tubs to stores stuff in, but can’t figure that out until everything is sorted. ugh. And now I have to wait until after my trip.

I did put everything that goes inside my desk away. That felt good. It’s a mess on top of it, but oh well for now. Inside my desk is my comfort zone. I will just go ostrich my head in there if I feel like I might start to panic from the disarray. Ha!

Anyway…here’s what a mess looks like to me: