BEST TWENTY-FIVE CENT INVESTMENT

Every day I haul home papers for work.  If the papers need to be corrected, they are put into a random pile and secured with a fastener.  If the papers are for planning purposes, such as worksheets for upcoming assignments, or if they are notes and important documents, I tend to slide them into a folder that goes back and forth between home and school.

Although the school year is only 75% over, my folder is already showing signs of severe decay.  A few weeks ago, I added duct tape to the side seam so that my papers wouldn't all fall out.  This has seemed to stem the worst of it.  Yesterday, I added some masking tape to the bottom seams to prevent the papers from careening out of the bottom of the folder.

This is not really the problem.

The problem is this: WHY THE FRIG AM I TAPING TOGETHER A FOLDER THAT COSTS TWENTY-FIVE FRIGGING CENTS?!

Honestly, I do have other folders.  I have a whole bunch of the regular file folders that come in different colors, including the popular standard manila variety.  These folders may not keep papers from falling out of the bottom, but they will certainly do the trick of transporting papers from Point A to Point B in my backpack.  I also have a slew of leftover pocket folders that I have collected from my years teaching and from my kids' years as students.  I probably even have some from when I was a graduate student and had to haul around papers, reports, manuscripts, and my oh-so-precious capstone project.

I head over to my bookcase (okay, to one of my many bookcases), and pull out a perfectly fine, perfectly pristine unused pocket folder.  This one has the three-hole addition inside, so this folder was probably worth about forty-five or fifty cents.  Carefully and with extreme organization, I move my papers from beat-up folder #1, the blue one, to the new and improved folder #2, the yellow one.

Just like that, I look professional again.  I will recycle the blue folder, much as it breaks my heart to see it go, but it put up a valiant fight.  One hundred thirty-five (or more) days of daily beat-downs, and that twenty-five cent investment withstood the test of time and wear-and-tear.