I finally closed my classroom door on the 2025-2026 school year on Friday, June 26th. 

There’s something so cathartic about a stripped classroom. It’s the visual representation of the passing of time and the inevitable fresh start in just a few weeks. 

Notice I didn’t say closing the door brought peace. 

The intense pace of the school year left me feeling like I was still running on the hamster wheel of schedules, checklists, and urgency. Between the in-school and family end-of-year to-dos and events, the stretch from Memorial Day to the last day of school was an Olympic sprint. 

Just as Olympic sprinters’ legs continue to pump to slow down after they cross the finish line, my productivity muscle need a serious cool-down when the school year finally ends. 

I sat in my yard Friday night attempting to relax on my first night of freedom, but my brain was not able to wind down. My thoughts of productivity battled my thoughts of gratitude for a summer well earned. Physically tired, but mentally wired and unfocused. 

I wanted desperately to just “be,” but that was impossible. 

In no time, as though I was still using my productivity muscle of the school year, I found myself with my laptop and tabs open for both of my daughters’ school supply lists and uniform needs for next year. 

I’ll just get a head start since I have the work project, house renovations, summer events, and vacations coming up. It will be good to get it out of the way and just be done.

And then I remembered all of the summers I absolutely judged the early July back-to-school commercials, moms with lists getting it done early, and stores that stripped their festive summer decor for pencil and book bins. 

How could anyone be school supply shopping when we just got to summer vacation?! Ridiculous! Preposterous! Skipping over the joy of summer entirely!

Now… I get it. 

Once I just accepted that at least looking at the supply lists and wrapping my head around what was needed would bring me peace, the judgment and the expected timeline fell away. The angst was in the unknown: the cost, the eye-of-newt items every list seems to include, and the two supply lists for different grade levels. 

Opening the tabs on my computer helped me to close the loops in my brain for the night. 

And maybe that’s just how I operate now: a little action before the unknown gets too loud.

I printed both lists and felt peace that it could wait for another day. Soon, but not that night.

The key takeaway from my “ah-ha” moment connects to the root of Spruceprints: do what works for you. Find the system, the simple product, or the routine that brings peace and make it part of your life.

Sometimes that looks like a weekly drawer system for school mornings. Sometimes it looks like printing the supply lists before July even begins.

Ignore the pressure to buy the cutest, most expensive, most perfectly coordinated school items the second they hit the shelves. I keep coming back to the same lesson I learned from our $200 shopping essentials reset: knowing what we actually use matters more than buying what looks good online.

Also ignore the voice — even if it used to be your own — that says it is “too early” to think about school just because summer has barely started.

Preparing early does not have to mean rushing summer away.

Sometimes it means giving your brain one less thing to carry.

Relaxing does not always look like doing nothing. Sometimes it looks like a cup of tea on the couch after the kids have gone to bed, two school supply lists printed, and a few online shopping tabs open for another day.

I am still very much in summer mode — pool bags, snacks, sunscreen, and all — but my brain needed one small back-to-school loop closed before it could settle.

Maybe that is the cool-down exercise my productivity muscle needs most.

More School-Year Systems from Spruceprints