It’s back to school time, and that not only involves school supplies, but where you store them. The lockers of my youth—and probably yours too—were utterly unremarkable dingy gray towers, invariably dented from teenage scuffles.

Surprisingly, my Michigan-based granddaughter got her first locker in first grade. 

“My code is my birthday,” she shared conspiratorially.

But I was a seventh-grader. Lockers signaled leveling up to junior high, a true rite of passage. My big fear concerned the padlock. Would I be able to expertly rotate it right-left-right within the three-minute passing period between classes? At 12, you desperately don’t want to ask a teacher for help! Soon enough muscle memory takes over, and you’re flipping it open without a second thought.

Sharing your combination with anyone in those early grades was taboo. I doubt there was much inside to entice stealing, however, and everybody had the same old textbooks. (Remember the stamp on the inside cover with lines for every student’s signature who had ever used that copy?)

And your locker partner might be easy to get along with or leave lunches rotting in the back. It’s the luck of the draw that first year until you can choose for yourself—a bit like future college roommates.

Kids occasionally stuffed each other in lockers. I was relieved to be neither a stuffer nor stuffee.

My first locker was across the hall from Mr. Scott’s science class, imprinted probably because of the newness of it all. The locations of the rest are a blur. 

The students of today, though? Their lockers are amazingly close to tiny homes. The sheer number and variety of locker accessories—a relative newcomer to the school supplies category—are mind-boggling. While we might have hung a poster at most, these teen decorators have chandeliers. (Yes, really!) And that’s just the start of their creative personalizing.

They cover the inside with patterned wallpaper and put a shag rug on the floor. Then they hang fancy mirrors up, along with a gallery wall of framed photos and a smattering of motivational sayings. Succulent magnets or rainbow gem stickers add extra sparkle. Fairy lights and a disco ball further elevate the look.

Magnetic hooks and mesh shelves help with organization, holding necessary items. Blackboards, whiteboards and bulletin boards convey important messages. (Our communications were scrawled on notebook paper and shoved through the crevice in the door.) Even the lockers themselves now sport a multitude of colors beyond the basic gray. And the trend of decorating the outside of friends’ lockers on their birthdays? Fun.

In Augusts gone by, paper bags covered textbooks. All the pens worked. Anticipation ran high for friends, teachers—a fresh start. Everything was found and nothing was lost. But by May, the book covers fell apart, the school supplies were worn out and the locker poster had fallen off. Summer beckoned with warmth and adventure.

In my high school, the last-day-of-school tradition meant students emptied out their lockers in the curved corridor. Essays, worksheets and quizzes carpeted the hallway, marked with red A’s, F’s and every grade in between. How cheeky of us. Our custodian worked plenty hard without tackling that extreme littering.

In a world where textbooks are increasingly offered online, will lockers eventually be obsolete? Perhaps, though schools will likely keep them until they no longer stand upright or close.

Those metal receptacles held bits of our teenage selves for a year, passed down to the next student and the one after that—smart storage solutions providing a small oasis of personal space in crowded hallways and tumultuous lives.