
Today, Alistaire and I took a little jaunt to school.
Lately, it seems that everything in my life has been about de-cluttering. At home, I harvested my closet for clothes I won't be using anymore and donated them to people who could really use them. Actually being able to walk into my closet and not feel claustrophobic? Pardon me, but I'm going to sound like a Mastercard commercial: it was priceless. It was a wonderful, freeing, cathartic moment.
Thus began the great cleansing of 2010. The closet cleansing simply seeped over into the rest of my home. Reorganization of misplaced or shoved items became priority one, and oddly, disposing of, finding a home for, or repositioning just a few items made my living room seem jarringly bigger. I won't say that my domain is showroom-worthy yet, but significant progress and improvements have been made, and I no longer fear the sudden stop-by from various friends. (You all know the feeling--you're totally cozy and happy in your clean but "lived-in" home, but you'd die of embarrassment if anyone ever saw it, right?)
The thing is, apparently home was not quite enough. Alistaire and I (with my aide of my awesome new colleague Mallory) decided to take on the ancient relics of the music department at my school. In showing my new colleague around the department's nooks and crannies, we found that long-forgotten bits of useless rubbish had been stashed here, shoved, over the years, into odd little conformities. The intention was, of course, (and I speak as a sometime "shover") to come back at a later date after the shoving, and purge the cupboard of all useless piffle. Except that, as every teacher of every age knows, often those organizational details of teaching may fall by the wayside in the interest of spending more time on what we really do--create relationships with and learn with students. (Forgive us this little oversight.) The stuff so often becomes secondary to the heart of our profession. I don't mean to use this as a disclaimer for sometimes being a pack rat, but it is true. I'd like to think that it's less important that I shoved the equipment for the antiquated (and unusable) midi-keyboard lab (that hooked up to something like a Comadore 64!) into the cupboard and more important that I focused my time instead on building curriculum, planning lessons, and helping kids.
I digress . . .
After yesterday, we had filled at least four of the regular trash bins and two recycling bins. Today, one of our custodians kindly lent me a large bin (on wheels) for the continued purging. :)
Today, slightly lighter in the dross department (though still a little . . . let's say "chubby"), Alistaire and I came armed with cleaning supplies--glass/surface cleaner, paper towel, and Swiffer duster cloths. And we attacked those dust bunnies, dust bears, and dust dragons with zest. Somehow, in my mind, my wiping cloth was really more of sword taking down the monstrous dust zombies as they raged their battle and tried to stake their claim on our space. But, ha! I would slay them all.
Quite frankly, I know that I teach in one of the driest non-desert locations of all time, and I am cognizant of the fact that the Dust Bunny Army is biding its time, strategically forming its plot to take over the music department again. But I too am armed (still with the better part of a spray cleaner!), and today . . . Today I am victorious!
If there weren't enough reasons to love you, this posting is one more. And, might I add, that picture of a dust "bunny" is the best ever.
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