As most of you know, I (Rhonda) was a teacher from 1996 – 2001. Call me crazy, but setting up my classroom was one of my favourite times of the school year. The anticipation of meeting my new class, the fresh start and the potential before me, always got me excited. I definitely still had the “first day of school” nightmares but for the most part, the start of a new school year was very positive for me. My “organizer” brain enjoyed the logistics of physically setting up my classroom.
In preparation for the new school year, I encourage you to take the opportunity to go through your supplies and files and determine whether or not you are going to use them this year.
Ask yourself some of these questions:
- Will I use it this year? Another year?
- Is there somewhere online that I can get this if I need it?
- Do I have a colleague that might have this item if I need to borrow it?
- Can I take a picture of this as a record and recycle/donate it?
- Is this out of date?
Use this guideline: If I haven’t used it in the past two years, chances are, I never will.
As teachers, we tend to keep a lot of items because we see the potential. We keep things “just in case” we need them someday. September is the perfect time to purge unused supplies, old files and teaching aids that haven’t been used for years.
One tip that we often share with our clients is about the “ambivalent box”. If you have some items that you aren’t sure you want to get rid of or you want to keep “just in case” – place these items in a box.
Print on the top of the box – “donate if not used by June 2019”. You have the security of knowing that if you need the item, you are still able to retrieve it out of the box but at the end of the year, if you haven’t used any items, donate it.
Don’t even look in the box because you may second guess your decision! Simply drive it to your local thrift store at the end of the school year. When we donate items, don’t view it as you are losing something, but you are blessing someone else. There are other teachers and homeschooling families that would love to be able to use some of these supplies. They are blessed to find such a great deal at the thrift store. When we get rid of excess items, we feel great and so do the thrift bargain hunters that find them!
I write a couple of blogs for teachers each year at this time.
Check out these two from August 2017
Spectacular September Start-up
Get the jump-start on classroom maintenance
