Where Do I Put It?: 5 Tips for Keeping Your Homeschool Paraphanelia From Taking Over Your Hosue (Intro)
We're in the midst of a major remodel project involving the kitchen, laundry/mud room and coat closet. Most everything's been packed up and moved elsewhere for the next couple of weeks. (We had some water leaks which had damaged the floor, necessitating the change. Our cabinets were pretty worn, too, so we decided to go for a big do-over.) This is what our kitchen looked like a week ago:
At the end of the week, Tim and the kids gutted everything, so now it looks more like this:
With this remodel, I've been giving a good bit of thought to how to organize all sorts of things maximally, but let's start with the problem before thinking about solutions.
Something happens when your children go to school in the same place you eat, sleep, and generally live. It occurs sort of gradually, but as time continues and more children begin school, and you acquire more and more educational accoutrements. Soon books, teacher's manuals, computers, office supplies, educational DVDs and CDs, and math manipulatives seem to take over your house. And then you have a few options. You might be fortunate enough to have a separate school room (preferably in a little guest home out back where it is cleaned by little elves at night.) Or you might just go with the elementary schoolhouse theme and decorate your living room walls with timelines and your kitchen with alphabet and nature posters. (Don't laugh. I've done this.) Alternatively you can find some creative storage areas in the places you do school that blend in with the other functions of your home.
We actually have a schoolroom, and it worked well when the children were younger, but it hasn't been used much as such for a number of years. (The living room and schoolroom are slated for our next major remodel!) In our home, as in so many others, school takes place all over - living room, kitchen, bedrooms, outdoors. In the next five posts I'm going to write about some of the things that help to keep school materials organized and accessible without allowing this stuff to overtake your home.
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| This is our kitchen "before" |
At the end of the week, Tim and the kids gutted everything, so now it looks more like this:
 |
With this remodel, I've been giving a good bit of thought to how to organize all sorts of things maximally, but let's start with the problem before thinking about solutions.
Something happens when your children go to school in the same place you eat, sleep, and generally live. It occurs sort of gradually, but as time continues and more children begin school, and you acquire more and more educational accoutrements. Soon books, teacher's manuals, computers, office supplies, educational DVDs and CDs, and math manipulatives seem to take over your house. And then you have a few options. You might be fortunate enough to have a separate school room (preferably in a little guest home out back where it is cleaned by little elves at night.) Or you might just go with the elementary schoolhouse theme and decorate your living room walls with timelines and your kitchen with alphabet and nature posters. (Don't laugh. I've done this.) Alternatively you can find some creative storage areas in the places you do school that blend in with the other functions of your home.
We actually have a schoolroom, and it worked well when the children were younger, but it hasn't been used much as such for a number of years. (The living room and schoolroom are slated for our next major remodel!) In our home, as in so many others, school takes place all over - living room, kitchen, bedrooms, outdoors. In the next five posts I'm going to write about some of the things that help to keep school materials organized and accessible without allowing this stuff to overtake your home.
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