Where Do I Put All My Homeschool Stuff: Tip #3 - Think UP!

One time a news reporter came to our home to interview us for a feature on homeschooling in our county. She'd been spending time with families across the homeschool spectrum, from unschoolers to very traditional "school at home" types. Walking in to our living room she exclaimed, "Now I know what you all have in common! It's a love of books!"

She was right. Just about every home school family I know has a large collection of good reading material of all sorts. So when we consider housing our homeschool materials, to a large extent that means finding a home for all those volumes.

Tip #3 is to THINK VERTICALLY. When possible, use wall space to increase your storage.

Walking through our house, I counted something like 19 bookshelves with books and a couple of others with science supplies or other non-booky things. We call this one the "hanging bookshelf" because it just sits strangely in the air. But it works for the space we have in that location. 

Every time we had a new baby, my parents gave two gifts to the new child: an antique desk (like the one above) and a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf. My mom even penned a little poem for the back of each bookshelf. The older couple have taken their bookshelves, but we need to be thinking about replacements as these are going to start leaving the house more rapidly in coming years.

  This is one of the three currently living in Amanda's room. (What are those squiggles on the wall? It's John 15 in Greek. Amanda's like that.)

But you can hold more than just books on your walls. We have metal shelves for science and art supplies, for puzzles, and more. For a long time we had an over-sized bulletin board in our schoolroom for displaying art projects. Along the frame we also put some hooks which were handy for hanging large zipper plastic bags which held ongoing projects such as lapbooks.

In our current remodel, we've added two vertical storage features. They are so simple, and yet they make me really happy.

Tim built this ironing board holder to keep it off the floor

I don't know why we didn't do this sooner - rack to hold brooms and hooks for shopping bags

So there you have it. Maximize your storage space by using walls and shelves to get things off the floor!