I was going to ask the people at Lifeway how to post a photo because I wanted to share what a mess my dining room was!
Anyone here have trouble keeping all the stuff of homeschooling organized?
Got any ideas to share?

Blessings,
Christine

"Have trouble" would be a great understatement!! Sometimes I think the homeschool stuff is taking over our home, and my life! And now that we're "in transition" and not even in our own home, it's a real challenge! My sister has been kind enough to let us turn her dining room into a school room. We have a small bookcase to hold most of the books that are used every day, and a few boxes to hold the things we need to keep handy but don't use quite as often. The table stays cluttered and covered with stuff. I'm SO looking forward to when we move into our own house! We will have a "study" that we will use as a school room, so I'll finally have a place to store everything without it being spread all over the house. The study isn't big enough to actually do school in there all the time (not with 3 students anyway) so we'll probably use the dining room and breakfast room tables to work at and store everything in the study.

Hi Christine

I have some ideas on my website here: http://www.homeschool-curriculum-for-life.com/organize-your-homeschool.html

Wendy,
Great ideas! I love your site!
Christine

So...It's 7:15pm on Saturday evening and I'm sitting in the middle of our living room surrounding by PILES AND PILES of all the books,
files, cookbooks, stationery, writing materials, etc. that were on the bookshelves in our dining/computer room so I can make room for HOMESCHOOLING!!! I'm using the "When was the last time I used this?/Will I realistically ever need it again?/If I do through it out and then need it, can I replace it?" method of purging these piles and I'm on my fourth garbage bag (HINT: Use black garbage bags so your kids can't see through them and then start removing all of your hard work crying,
"You're trying to throw out my most favorite thing in the world! How could you?!)

Anyway...I'm making progress and am looking forward to having the five boxes of cyberschool computer parts that are sitting on my living room floor (next to the piles) set up and functioning ASAP.

Glad to have people to share this with who understand.

Have a great Sunday.

Blessings.
Debbie

Okay, it's been a while since this thread started, but now we're finally in our house and FINALLY starting to get organized! Last week the school room was my main project. What a mess!! It's a small room, not quite 10x10. Lining the walls we have two tall book cases, two desks, and a supply cabinet. Oh, and a tall plastic drawer unit (six drawers, I think). I have a third book case off the kitchen/breakfast room that I wanted in the school room but it won't fit. So last week we started by moving ALL of the books around, sorting them, getting rid of some and organizing the rest. I finally have all of our curriculum on one book case, all of our literature on the second one, and all of my books on the one off the kitchen. Next step was to organize all of our supplies. I had no idea how many school supplies we have!! I pulled everything out, sorted and organized it, and put it all away in the cabinet. I wanted to put art supplies in there, too, but it filled up too quickly, so those are now upstairs near the game room in a second supply cabinet. I love having a place for all the "stuff" without my whole house looking like a school. Since only two desks will fit in the school room, and since each of the girls needs to work with me on some subjects, we worked out a schedule where two girls will work at the desks (not always the same two) and the third will work at the breakfast table with me. They'll "change classes" about every 45-60 minutes, depending on who needs to work with me and who can work independently. That way I'm not running around from one to the other, they're coming to me instead. I think I'm going to get some kind of cart that I can keep all my teacher stuff in, roll it out to the breakfast room in the morning, then put it away when school is finished for the day.

In the process of doing all of this I got rid of several boxes of books that we've outgrown, and I have two more boxes of stuff I'm hoping to be able to sell. I'm sure there's more that needs to be gotten rid of, but at least we're off to a good start.

A quick update -- Last time I worked on the school room I got the perimeter done, but the middle of the room was still piled high with boxes of stuff I didn't know what to do with. Since school for us starts next week, I have to get that room finished. I had to box up some stuff that I'd pulled out, but then couldn't find places for. I now have about six storage boxes of stuff that I don't know what I'm going to do with. Some are school files (we got rid of our file cabinets when we moved), some are books/curriculum I want to sell or give away, and at least one box is just "junk" (not really junk, but good stuff that's just all mixed together). The desks are cleared off, the supply cabinet and bookcases are organized, and each of the girls and myself have a box for all of our current books. Those are lined up under the window so they're easy to get to but out of the way when we don't need them.

Do any of you keep files of past school work? If so, what do you do with it? I had a file cabinet before and I think 3 drawers were filled. I don't really want another 4-drawer file cabinet in my house, but don't know what to do with all of this stuff. Legally I don't have to save any of it, but I can't bare to part with it!