Document Horder

I horde documents.  I’ve created and curated probably a gazillion billion charts, visuals, graphic organizers and so much more.  One media technician warned me of a terabyte overload and I must reduce the amount of documents I had acquired.  So with that little encouragement, I have done numerous sweep throughs of my crates, file cabinets and boxes to try to whittle down the massive amounts of “teacher stuff.” (I still maintain a colossal digital warehouse of documents but the terabyte world must be bigger and it’s not taking up any physical space.) 

This trait of mine has actually benefited someone earlier today.  A colleague was in search of something to support a student’s reading comprehension growth.  She had mentioned a resource that was recommended to her.  My brain started to mentally search the file cabinet to my left which held a treasured catalog of documents I just can’t seem to part with just yet.

So I pulled open one of the drawers as far as possible; and eureka… there it was!!!!!  The fact that I could give her what she wanted and remove a document from my possession was fantastic!  She took a whole manila folder worth of goodies. So maybe I’m not so much of a horder now as I use to be.

Later on in the evening, right smack in the middle of this post, I realized I had something else to remove from my space. I ran upstairs, pulled out a bin of documents, charts, lists, etc. and RECYCLED THEM!!!! These documents were part of something that has closed it’s chapter in my life, so I don’t need them hanging around taking up limited space.

Today’s slice also helped me realize that I don’t throw things out because I always see a potential for it to be used in another way.  (Even if it’s years down the road.)  But when a chapter closes- so does the potential.  I don’t need to hold onto something that isn’t going to be put to good use by me.