I started last February by hauling thirteen bags of crap out of my basement, including some stuff my landlord left behind fifteen years ago. The basement is 75% or more done, my spare room is about 75% or more done, and I still have some furniture to build that has been hanging around for way too long in a box. I am determined to get it done by this coming February. I figure an entire year is a decent expectation to go through decades-worth of stuff.
This organizational bug has hit me at school, too.
With so many moves over the years at my job (between grades, classrooms, wings, floors, curricula, buildings, schools...), I am finally thinning out my stash of stuff -- materials, files, supplies... Of course, as soon as I toss crap, someone needs it RIGHT AWAY!
The first order of business is the school closet that is packed full of my work stuff. I get that organized right before school starts, and it's a dream working out of the closet as my personal book shelves. This leaks over to my desk, then to my filing cabinet and to the Google drive that's full of random documents and various other items -- now all neatly in virtual file folders.
I believe that I am as organized as I can be at this point. Until... someone asks me for data from the last three years.
Seriously? That stuff got demolished with the old school building. Gone with the bricks! See ya later. It's okay, though, because it's all in Cyberland, right? Well, sort of. You see, our district doesn't use that data system anymore, and the company itself has gone belly-up.
Smart-ass that I am, I go back into the program through some cyber-craftiness, and I manage to access my data from not only last year, but right up until we started using the system in 2007. Once I print out what I need (before I get permanently banned or crash our current system with my cyber-creeping), I decide to organize it all into two binders. I might need more, but at least the big binder is like my non-digitized database for information.
Okay, so it's kind of like old-school card catalogs, but it seems to be working for me. I'll let you know after my big meetings whether or not I really am organized, or if I flip around trying to look intelligent but unable to actually locate any data I need.
The best part about it all is that my hole puncher is now full. I'm going to have plenty of round paper confetti for New Year's Eve this year.
