So I arrived a year ago and my desk came with a lot of cluttered items. I felt unmotivated to organize it and as the year went on it’s gotten progressively worse.
I want to throw out the unnecessary things but I don’t know where to start at this point because I’ve collected many additional papers and handouts myself.
What do you all typically do with the classroom handouts and weekly schedules? Is it strange I hoard them all? I never know what’s important and what can be tossed away.
5 comments
i shred mine on a weekly basis… i find most things aren’t very important..
I’m waiting until next year to see how much I reuse, then in a desk warming period I’ll go nuclear and most likely destroy 90% of it. Unless a lot of it turns out to be super useful…
My desk is easily in the top 5 cleanest in the office though, every other teacher has full draws and laundry baskets *full* of papers, right by their desks. So it could get worse.
Most of them, a good 99.9% hahahah is NOT important. I was careful with everything at first, but as the years passed, the first thing I do in my new schools is throw EVERYTHING away. There is no game, handout, drawing I would need or use.
If something looks expensive, not so old or useful, I would put it in a box and put that box in one of the many available rooms.
I remember being obsessed with cleaning before, and insisted to do a deep cleaning of a classroom ( I was “friends” with both the principal and the vice principal). We found some kind of machines from the 70’s, nobody new what they are for hahahah, and tons of documents from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. They thanked me because if I havent insisted, those documents would still be there for another 50 years hahahah.
Anyway, just start separating things in 3:
-garbage
-things you want to keep
-things you want to put in a box and hide somewhere far from your desk.
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Then, you separate everything into smaller groups. It usually takes me 3-4 hours, one day but it could be 2 or even 3.
Insert does this spark joy meme
Chuck it out unless it’s regularly used. Keep an electronic copy of some of the potentially more useful stuff.