locker

My Storage Locker

During my first year of graduate school I gained access to a locker in the urban planning building, which was a big help. I was living 7 miles from campus in the Cully neighborhood and commuting downtown by bike or bus, so it was fabulous to not have to schlep everything every day.

This week as I wrapped up my coursework, my FINAL final project was to clean out my locker. When I did, I discovered that over time I’d collected quite a bit of stuff. I also realized I wasn’t counting these items in My 200 Things Challenge. So I'm writing all about it to clear my conscience.

My locker became a repository for things that I used when I was on campus (textbooks, snacks, my chalk bag for trips to the climbing wall, etc.) But I had a bad habit of stashing stuff here that I intended to send to someone but never seemed to find the time to actually pop in the mail.

I was also startled to discover how much paperwork I'd collected over the past two years. My new year's resolution was to go paper free so I began Strategizing Digitizing. All my paperwork went into a file in my locker to be scanned (at some later date, of course, when I had time.) By the time I looked at that daunting stack of paperwork I decided I can't possibly need it all. I spent an hour Getting all My Docs in a Row and narrowed it down to just a small collection of documents that I really need. I’ll be scanning documents in the next couple days while I still have access to a high speed scanner.

In the end, there were just a few items to take home. A box of envelopes. My gym gear. Some uneaten snacks. And a gift (from last year!) that I need to mail (not pictured because that would ruin the surprise!) as soon as my sister Heidi sends me her mailing address (nudge, nudge!)