Time to tidy up.

I've missed writing the last few days because I've been working in the yard. In fact, I've spent most of my free time the last few months working in and around my house since my husband and I decided it was time to sell. All of a sudden my comfortable house (or perhaps it would be more honest to say the house that I had become comfortable in) was in need of a lot of work. Flooring needed replacement, walls inside and out needed paint, landscaping needed trimming and closets needed to be cleaned out. I began to wonder when everything had gotten so out of hand.

How could I have let this happen?

It was quite easy actually. Time passed and my family got comfortable with where we were. As long as no one was in danger, it was easier to adapt than to repair.  We learned to walk around items out of place in the garage and ignore the cracked floor tile in the kitchen. Sure the house would have looked nicer with a new paint job but it was good enough. Until it wasn't good enough for someone else who might want to buy this house. Now we have a problem.

As a teacher I have some of those same problems in my classroom. This far in to the school year the bulletin boards are starting to show their age and some furniture is not quite in the right place. There are some stacks of equipment to be repaired and to-do lists that are waiting to be done. I would never open my media center in August looking like it does today but I'm at a place where I've come to accept it because there are only so many hours in the day. I'm comfortable.

I'm sure I'm not the only teacher that finds themselves in this position and that's OK. In April many teachers' classrooms look lived in and they should. Thousands of students and teachers have been teaching and learning for three grading periods already. But we have one more grading period to go so beginning tomorrow I think I'll make the effort to try to get things looking a little better. I may not have more than 5-10 minutes every day to work on these things, but it's a start.