Preschool Planner or Hoarder?

My experiences as an early childhood teacher have turned me into a semi-hoarder.  For the past few weeks I have been assisting the clean out of the storage cabinets and drawers in the preschool and it has helped me come to the conclusion that early childhood people hoard things.  We don't hoard in the sense that we are going to get a documentary show dedicated to us...but we are hoarders all the same...actually I would watch a show like that because it would give me ideas on what I need to "save" for preschool use.  Those of us in the field have even trained our significant others to watch out for the good stuff for us...my husband has held up empty food container and asked if I needed it for school...the receiving office on campus has called to see if I wanted the boxes that held the music department's new tubas...mmmmm....yes please! 

Early childhood people are not typically listed on the Fortune 500 list...so we may be a little on the frugal side.  I actually find it thrilling to come up with new uses for what others may think of as "crap".  I have a workshop presentation that I frequently do at conferences that is dedicated to creative ideas that can be done with inexpensive items...often junk or recycled items.  I also come from the school of people who like to make games and activities for kids...that way it targets exactly what I want it to.  While I was looking through a Lakeshore catalog the other day I actually marked a page with a sticky note that read "make this".  As an opening activity in my curriculum course I take in a bag of random items and have my class brainstorm things they could do with the items in a preschool classroom.  It is a fun activity that opens our eyes to the possibilities that ordinary items hold.  My student teachers have fully caught the preschool hoarding bug because they are forever asking each other to save water bottles and toilet paper tubes.  I feel that I am doing my small part in saving the environment by encouraging hoarding by future early childhood professionals.  Plus...now all the money that they will be making (ha, ha) they can tuck under their mattress because they can teach for cheap!