packing

I am on a sad countdown.

7 weeks.

Not just 7 weeks until the end of the school year, but 7 weeks until I am done at my school.

I have been there since DS2 started Kindergarten.

I am being moved to a different school in the fall as part of a shuffling of grades and such and joining a large staff.

It is a bittersweet move. I love my school and my staff and kids. I know every nook and cranny. I feel comfortable there and very confident. The kids know me. The parents know me. It's a great place to work.

I am really nervous about moving to a new place. really nervous.

Anyways, I have slowly started to pack. The end of the year will be far too busy with all our school activities plus my son's graduation and a family wedding.

Boy I have a lot of stuff. I look around my room and shudder to think about lifting and carrying each one of these to a truck, and then out of the truck at the new school and up flights of stairs.

I am packing slowly and methodically. I have to look at everything and decide if it is something I am ever going to use again. If not, it can't go.   To make it fun for my class, I had them all guess how many boxes I would have when it's all said and done. Just like the Price of Right, the person who guesses the closest without going over wins a $10 ITunes card.

I made a master sheet so I can quickly jot down what goes in each box so as I hunt and search and go to unpack, I can find things.

I already have 15 boxes and I have packed almost nothing.  I gave away about 4 boxes of books to lower grade teachers. Ones I know really won't work in my new setting and haven't been read by my kids over the years. The new class has jumped on them and is devouring them so I know I made a good choice. I don't even want to think about how much money I spent on books over the years, even if they were Scholastic.

I was thinking of my cleaning at home and the using up of stuff. Same could definitely be said about my classroom. I mean, in one drawer alone, I had 24 highlighters that are in various stages of use. 24!  craziness.  So I pulled one out and will use it (I use them for marking things like essays) and use it until it's done or fat and fuzzy, then bam! onto the next one.

Perhaps I am the a only one, but my, do I have a problem with the accumulation of stuff. I am glad I started packing early.