Hi Ho Hi Ho... it's off to you know where...

Today is September 1st and the thing that I have been in denial about (a.k.a... going back to work) is less than a week away. It's unbelievable to me, how fast this past year has gone. After 14 months off, spending 24/7 at home with my little boy, I'm going to have to venture back into the real world. Yikes!

The only saving graces that are keeping me from bursting into tears right about now are: (A) -  I'm finished work at 2:15 every day (thanks to an earlier start time) so I can rush home to the little one, and (B) - Edison will be home all day with his Daddy, which is awesome.

In the beginning of July I ventured in to the school, which is an old school - but new to me as this will be my first year teaching there. When I saw the band room... well I just about had a heart attack. It was a mess! There was stuff laying around everywhere. And there was DUST, DUST, and more DUST... which goes along with it being an old building I guess.

Anyone who knows me, knows I like to stay fairly organized at work... it's much more productive that way. Well, this was an organized person's nightmare and I knew I'd have to tackle it before the first day of school.

Last week Marilyn (who has sadly retuned home to the real world as well) went in with me one day while Jonathan stayed home for a trial-run with Edison for the whole day. My band room has three storage rooms, all of which were a total mess, so Marilyn and I dealt with one of those rooms that day. The room we cleaned was the one that stressed me the most because it had all the band music piled in it... in no order what-so-ever. It doesn't make for a very efficient music library when none of the music is in alphabetical order!!

While Marilyn put all the music in order (and entered it into the computer as she went), I dealt with binder upon binder of old stuff.... like outdated music resources and about 10 years of attendance binders. I don't know the music teacher who was at that school before me... and I don't want to be mean... but I think he was somewhat of a hoarder. There was so much stuff that just needed to be thrown out... that was clearly garbage, that he was hanging on to.

I took a few before and after pictures... they were taken on my phone so they aren't the greatest quality, but you'll get the idea.

This is the music room... my new home away from home 

The storage room BEFORE... binders, binders, and more binders 

The other side of the storage room BEFORE... this was the disastrous state the band music was in 

AFTER... the band music relocated as is now in alphabetical order 

AFTER of the other side. Note how you can actually see the floor!

This was all the garbage and recycling that came out of that room

On Tuesday my mom came over to hang out with Edison while Jonathan and I went in to deal with the other two storage rooms. I knew the school had a lot of guitars (63 to be exact) and a lot of them were missing strings, so Jonathan had the fun job of replacing strings while I dealt with the other stuff. I was absolutely covered from head to toe in dust!

Another example of the disorganization that I inherited  

Jonathan, hard at work 

Another storage room BEOFRE. There was so much piled in front of those filing cabinets, I had no idea what was in them.  

 Part way through the clean-up

AFTER... garbage gone, things back in an organized way

The guitars, after some TLC from Jonathan

BEOFRE... I didn't get a great picture of this storage room before because it was very full of stuff, and I couldn't find the light switch at the time 

AFTER... full but organized... we even found a floor in this one too! 

The garbage... there were a lot of things that would cost more to fix than to just buy new... so a lot was thrown out that day. 

As we were leaving, Jonathan said "I feel dirty"... and it was true, we were pretty gross. I'm glad it's dealt with now so that when I show up for my first day of real work next week, I don't have to worry about tackling any more dusty junk. Thank you to Marilyn and Jonathan for helping make my return to work a whole lot less stressful!