Changing Classrooms and Saving Stuff

I've heard that hording disorder is hereditary.  My nana had it bad, my sister has it almost as bad, and I admit, I have a touch of it.  I'm not talking about collecting hair or used tissues or some of the other gross stuff you see on TV (I think my weirdest issue is that for some reason any sort of container is hard for me to get rid of).  And although my closets at home and school are nearly full, the "living space" is open and tidy enough.  But the idea of watching several barrels of my fourth grade tools being brought to the curb is one of those parts of changing grades that I was dreading.

The person who is coming into my classroom has been teaching full time for 3 years.  She has also decided that she wants lots of space in the closets, which meant today that she dumped shelves and shelves of whole binders.  I wish I was not in today to see it.

At least she had mostly prepared me for this ordeal.  She told me a few weeks ago that she did not want my anchor charts.  I have to admit I was offended; I feel like they were gold.  They've not only been loved by my own students (one year the kids told me "making posters is your super power") they have also been shared by many on Pinterest, so I know they're useful.  She said that she wanted to photograph some of them for reference, and get rid of the rest.  I told her that I'd take them.  I'll check that I have them all photographed for my blog, and either save my favorites or I could always hold a giveaway for them on my blog; that way I'd know they were going to a teacher who really wants them.

As for the binders that were dumped; I was ready for that too.  The key was all in a great little FREE app I stumbled on at random.  It's called CamScanner (for Android or iPhone) and it's basically a quick and easy document scanner.  Basically, you use your phone or tablet to take a picture of the document.  But then the genius is it auto selects the document (with at least 90% accuracy) so you just have to click the check mark to crop it.  It automatically skews it back into a rectangular shape.  Take another picture, and another, until you have finished a full set of, say, your invertebrates unit.  Then you can email the whole batch to yourself at once because it turns it into a pdf and it even zips it for you so that it's quick!  All my hard work is now saved digitally, not taking up any space, and the hard copies are there for her to (hopefully) use, or throw out.

We've been out of school for less than one week, but thanks to this document scanner and my dear husband who came to help me pack up my bulletin board decor, I'm nearly finished with my old classroom.  Pretty soon I won't have anything left up there to lay claim to, or any reason to go upstairs at all.