More on Organizing Homeschool Supplies

I’ve written about organizing homeschool supplies before, but I have found that it’s never a finished job. As our family gets older, our needs change. I still stick to the principles that I outlined, but I’ve made some different applications.

No Homeschool Room?

We don’t have a specific room for homeschooling. It’s not that I wouldn’t like one, but I would need it to be centrally located and we don’t have any space in our home that would work. So we use the dining room and kitchen for our seat work, and we do most of our reading aloud in the living room. This fall we bought a new bookcase from IKEA (which by the way, is my absolute favorite store in the whole world!). The new bookcase wasn’t a replacement bookcase but an additional bookcase, because we have too many a lot of books. Since we were running out space for more bookcases, we had to get a little creative. We put the new bookcase in the master bedroom.

Yes, I broke the rules about making sure your bedroom is a cozy, comfortable haven. Don’t allow clutter in your bedroom. Make it simple, etc. and so on. Of course, since we happen to love books (hence the bookcase necessity), we still find the bedroom quite cozy: bookcase and all. Of course, I would probably move into the library if they would let me. It is important to note that our bedroom is one of 4 rooms on the main level of our home. (The others being the living room, dining room and kitchen.) Therefore, it is a convenient place to store homeschool materials. So, all my teacher’s guides have now migrated to the bedroom. The older kids’ schoolwork has been moved to file boxes with hanging folders. They are easy to pick up and carry to wherever they want to work. These unfortunately live in the floor in front of the new bookcase.

In addition, I’ve added a handy check box. Completed assignments that need to be checked or filed go into the box. I’ve not perfected a system for actually checking everything in a timely manner, but at least everything is in a nice little box instead of piled on the kitchen counter.

I made myself take pictures without straightening up the shelves. So there are some interesting “accessories”.  Please don’t call the decorating police on me!