Keeping it Real - Homeschool Organization continued

I'm participating in Keeping it Real, motivated by Brenda at The Family Revised. Today's challenge was to demonstrate our homeschool organization (or lack thereof!), so in addition to my newest organizational tools I posted about a few weeks ago, I'll go ahead and share the rest. This is a bit scary, as we had an overnight guest yesterday, so hardly any chores were done, and we are "Keeping it Real", so I'm not doing any "tidying" first - eeek! Thankfully, we'll be doing the "Quick Cleanup" that was mentioned earlier this week on Biblical Womahood before we start any schoolwork!

Let me first say that we do our homeschooling in the kitchen. Our kitchen is has a large eating nook attached, and the entire room is very open to our casual play/living room, so when I'm having to do some one-on-one schooling with one of the children, the other children can play within eye and ear shot, which is really nice! When we bought the house, it needed a total remodel, and this was Michael's idea - I LOVE it!!

From kitchen to living room:

From living room to kitchen:


I keep my Desk Apprentice on top of my pantry. Yes, my pantry consists of one double cabinet. We are changing that VERY soon, as it becomes hard to keep organized, and in a 6 person family its good to have a wee bit more space to store food. But I digress. Here is the cabinet that my organizer sits on:


Also in the kitchen is the arts and crafts drawer storage thing (I'm sure there's a better word for it!) I mentioned in my earlier post, as well as the shelves where the children's dishes are stored, and a dresser that was our former arts and crafts center, but now just holds the fishtank, and some random papers inside. I'm still working out what to do with it! Its ugly and not very useful! However, I do like having the children's dishes in a place where it easy for them to put away and get out, so that little bookshelf works well for us.

The children's dishes:

The ugly and not very useful former arts and crafts dresser:

Inside these file boxes are where the boys keep their notebooks and books, and that works really well for us.



Next to the kitchen is what should be a formal dining room, but we use it as an office. In here, I have a bookshelf next to the computer desk, it holds stuff we'll need for the year, but not this week, as well as the boys' annual binders (where I transfer their stuff once we've finished a year for more compact storage), homeschooling catalogs, and the top shelf is supposed to have library books for the next few weeks, but I've gotten slack on reserving weeks ahead of time, so it is empty at the moment!


Next to that bookshelf is the computer desk, and above it is a hutch where I store things I'll need for future homeschooling, or random things that I might only need once in a blue moon, craft books, etc. I don't know why there is a pregnancy book in it! You can see that the children have decorated the hutch with their beautiful artwork (they have done the same with all of the bedroom doors in the house, too!)




Across the room is our puzzle/game bookshelf - we really like puzzles (that's not all of them on the shelves)! And it holds other games like math manipulatives, pattern blocks, playdough, etc. I'd like to somehow make this more efficient, but for now I'm out of ideas, so it stays as is.


The wooden peg puzzles are all in big ziplock baggies inside this container for easy access and clean-up. I used to stack them on the shelves but that lead to daily puzzle rampages where every piece of every puzzle would get scattered. This works SO much better!!


There's also a table that's in the office, but it is only acting as the main hotspot catchall right now, instead of a nice puzzle table like I had hoped. FlyLady would be ashamed!!


That's all there is! Despite the few areas that need a bit more tweaking (or removing completely!) it works pretty well for us. Thanks for Keeping it Real with me!