Paper hoard

How do I have FIVE boxes of paper.

Blank, unused paper.

How?

Oh wait, I know, I am crazytown.

I am a hoarder of supplies.

I remember buying all that paper.

It was 4 bucks a ream.

For colored paper.

And card stock.

Do you know how cheap that is?

I do. It normally runs 18-22 bucks a ream.

So I bought it and stored it and used it VERY sparingly.

The result: two years later, I have THREE boxes of paper.

And another of lined paper.

And one of construction paper, for similar reasons.


Packing up is hard.

It is tedious, exhausting, and sad all at the same time.

It is also exhilarating.

A chance to take inventory, to purge, to discover, to find.

It is weird.

I mean, I was in the same classroom for 9 years.

Moving down the hall took ages.

I found some things I had forgotten about.

There were not as many surprises as I expected, actually.

Other than the colossal overload of paper, of course.

Mostly, I found what I thought I had, in the places I thought I had it.

This was probably more surprising to my colleagues than to me.

My spaces always look a bigger mess than they really are.

It is kind of comforting to realize I am perhaps not as much a pack rat as I thought.

The amount of stuff I have is not comforting.

It is backbreaking!

I can't even imagine moving it all.

But I have to.

In fact, I have to move it all into storage for the summer.

Leaving it in my former classroom is not appropriate or fair.

And my new room is, well, to be determined, I guess.

The principal is on vacation and no one else can give me the go ahead.

So storage it is.

It will be more work, but it isn't the end of the world.

I have to accept the change, no matter how unreal it all feels.

Just the thought of landing elsewhere is scary as hell.

But it is still a good thing.