Organizing Your Homeschool Space

In my last blog post, I shared how I created the perfect homeschool space that turned out to be, well, not-s0-perfect. I learned that, instead of trying to create an entirely new space in our house that would facilitate homeschooling, I needed to modify and reorganize the space where we already spent most of our time to make it more amenable to our typical homeschooling routine. So, what does this look like?

First, we had to find a way to store more books. Under our dining room window, we managed to squeeze cubicle style shelves that run nearly the length of the wall. Each child has two cubes to store their binders, workbooks, notebooks, folders, and textbooks. The remaining cubes are filled with other frequently used books. Initially, alongside these shelving units we also included a set of colorful plastic drawers for each of our older children that helped them organize their daily subjects. These carts with removable boxes had been downstairs in our homeschooling space, but we moved them into our dining room. I really love the box system. Each cart holds ten brightly colored boxes or drawers, so we used two each day: one drawer for materials the child could complete on their own, and one for activities that each child needed to complete with me. The labels I attached to each box were a lot of fun and suited the personalities of my children. My daughter had lots of princess-themed pictures, and my son had lots of mythical and magic-themed pictures. After a few years, the drawer system didn’t work as effectively as it once did. Why? For the first few years, I was in charge of putting materials into the drawers. Then I put the kids in charge of organizing their boxes each day. They didn’t follow the system very well and started hiding things in the boxes.

My youngest son has now inherited a set of the drawers. He is excited to have his own materials to complete and I think the drawer system will work well for him (as long as I’m in charge of adding materials to the boxes). My older kids now rely on charts that guide them in what they need to work on each day. They get a two-sided sheet each week that has all of their subjects listed for each day, and they check off boxes when they complete each task. It’s easy for them to communicate with me what they’ve gotten done and they don’t have to organize any materials ahead of time like they needed to with the boxes.

Over time, we’ve also added in more bookshelves: one at the end of the hallway, two wooden crates to hold books on either side of the fireplace, and a set of four cubes next to my desk in our living room. One of the wooden crates contains library books that we have checked out. The other crate primarily contains books for our little guy. He has a lot of books in his downstairs bedroom, but we like to take some out of his room and rotate them through our living room since that’s where we spend the most time. The shelves next to my desk hold my teacher guides and the books that I use most often with the kids. On top of my cubes, I have a set of bins that hold binders, stickers, and other supplies. My cubes are a little hard to get to, but the key to making our living room accommodate our homeschooling lifestyle was to avoid wasted space. Bookshelves can tuck into many places, and supplies can be organized and easily hidden in baskets and drawers.

For example, the coffee table that sits in front of our couch has an open shelf on the bottom. My husband bought me some fun, striped canvas baskets that fit perfectly on the shelf. They have pull handles that make them easy to slide out. We are able to store music books, some books I’m currently reading with the kids, and many supplies (timeline cards, calculators and other math supplies, literature cubes, flashcards, etc.) in these baskets, and they aren’t an eyesore.

So, what happened to that great homeschooling space I put together downstairs? The kids still use it a lot, but mostly for horsing around, exercising, and Lego building. We’ve added in even more bookshelves there, too. You really can’t have too many bookshelves when you homeschool (kind of like Crock-Pots). I’ve also changed what we put on display on top of the cabinets. My kids LOVE Legos, so I’ve helped them create fairly elaborate Lego displays. I even managed to hang some dragons and ships from the ceiling. I have to admit, I’m pretty proud of our Lego set-ups. It kind of makes me want my own Legos. We have never been able to move all of our homeschooling supplies into our living room area, but that’s okay. We fully embrace that homeschooling has filtered into every part of our house.