homeschool organization tips Archives

We’re a family of six. We live in a 1600-square foot house (and that’s including the garage).

One of the major issues that homeschooling families face is finding the space to store their school supplies and we’re no strangers to that problem. As much as I would like to have a dedicated school room, we just don’t have the space or the money to have one. So, like many of you, we just have to make do with what we have.

If you’re strapped for storage room, take a look at how we practice homeschooling in a small space!

Homeschooling In a Small Space

Since our home is packed to capacity (two of us to each bedroom), we don’t have a spare room that we can convert into a “homeschool room”. I’d love to have one, but it’s probably not in the cards any time soon. So, we tend to keep our homeschooling supplies in a few strategic places around the home.

But – a note of caution: It’s really easy to just stash homeschool stuff all over the place. Seeing all that clutter around makes it hard for me to concentrate, though, so I tend to just avoid using the materials at all.

And that’s how I ended up with homeschool “storage zones”.

Our dining room does double duty and serves as our school room most of the time. We have a bookcase on one short wall where we keep the items we use the most. Our anchor charts and educational posters get stored behind the bookcase.

At the top, I keep our school printer, the kids’ microscope, a pencil sharpener, and a three-hole punch. Anything more and it turns into a drop zone for everything we have.

On the shelves below, we keep our homeschool materials according to grade level. Our two oldest children are using K12 this year, so we keep their computers and science supplies on the top shelf.

My two youngest children are still being taught exclusively by Mom, so their books and materials are on the shelves below. My third/fourth-grader’s books are on the left and the basket on the right holds the workbooks and printables for my kindergartner.

The bottom shelf is used for the textbooks that were sent to us for use with our K12 students. As you can see, they sent us quite a bit. I try to keep it separated by grade level, but it’s a constant work in progress.

On the full wall of our dining room, we keep a small chalkboard and a space for our educational charts and posters. I rotate that out, depending on what we’re studying at the moment. Right now, my youngest son is working on identifying the states, so that’s the chart we’re displaying.

This is our curriculum closet, which originally served as our hall closet. It already had shelving, thankfully, so it was a perfect place to put many of our materials.

As you can see, this space has to serve as a hall closet AND a homeschool storage space. I corral the household things in baskets and the homeschool things in separate stacks. The row at the top is textbooks for upper elementary grades. The lower shelves hold blank notebooks, lapbooks we intend to reuse, and storybooks we’ll be discussing with the kids this year.

I go through our books and materials every year and declutter the resources we won’t be using anymore. That keeps me from overfilling the closet. (Which is so very easy to do.)

And finally, I use a clear hanging shoe holder on the backside of the closet door to hold writing instruments, flash cards, and small office supplies. As you can see, I have a tiny overbuying problem when it comes to markers.

I will not buy any more markers. I will not buy any more markers. I will not buy any more markers.

I should probably make myself write that 100 times today.

How do you keep your homeschooling supplies from overtaking your home? Do you have any tips for schooling in a small space?

Need more tips for getting your homeschool ready for the new year?

And see plenty of suggestions for organizing your homeschool supplies on my Homeschool Organization Pinterest board!

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This post is part of the Back to Homeschool blog hop from iHomeschool Network! Click over to read more tips for making the most of your homeschool space!

As a second-generation homeschooler, my heart belongs with paper books, planners, and notebooks. (There’s just something about the smell of paper and erasers in the morning.)

However, I have seen the need to jump into the digital age and, as a result, I am now the proud owner of a TON of digital homeschool resources. A ton.

But here’s the thing: If you can’t find anything on your computer, then all of your resources don’t really do a lot of good, do they? 🙂 So I came up with a simple way to organize digital homeschool resources, which I’m sharing with you today!

How I Organize Digital Homeschool Resources

Here’s my big secret…

….

…..

I use Windows File Explorer.

That’s it!

It’s really, really simple, but it really, really works. Here’s how:

I have my digital homeschool resources organized by the type of “school” to which they belong: Elementary for PK-5, Middle for 6-8, and High for 9-12 – just like in public school. I also have a separate folder for Planning, which I’ll get to in a minute.

Within each “school” level, I have items separated by grade level. For example, my “Elementary” folder is organized by specific grade. Then for things that aren’t really grade specific, I have individual folders such as “Foreign Language”, “Unit Studies”, and “PE“. I also have a few general subject folders that include resources for several grades.

Within each grade-specific level, files are organized again by subject. This is a look at my second-grade folder. So when it’s time to plan second grade, which I’ll be teaching with Roo this fall, I can just browse through the folder for each subject and plan from there. Much, much better than stockpiling resources and then forgetting about them until a year or two after the grade is finished. (Been there, done that.)

Now, my “Planning” folder is organized a bit differently. I am a total homeschool planner packrat. I have all kinds of planners on my hard drive, so they have their own folder. Then I have a folder for “Notebooking”, one for “Clip Art”, and another for “Teaching Tips”, because those make up the bulk of my downloadable resources that are not directly for the kids to use on their own.

As you can see, I also have two other folders: one for the 2013 Omnibus and another for the 2014 Omnibus from iHomeschool Network. I was thrilled to be a contributing author last year and I’m looking forward to sharing in the sale again this summer.

I mean, look at all those wonderful resources! Whenever I need a homeschool pick-me-up, I click open one of those folders and just read and read and read. 🙂

How I Store Digital Homeschool Resources

Of course, sorting and organizing all of my files won’t matter much if my computer crashes. So, I use a couple of methods to keep my digital homeschool resources safe.

First, I store everything on my computer and on a USB flash drive. I usually have to get one with a decent amount of memory, because I am an admitted digital curriculum hoarder. 🙂

In addition, I back everything on my computer’s hard drive up once each week onto an external hard drive. I like Seagate’s portable external hard drive, because it’s super easy to use and I can take it with me if I go out of town. (Really, it’s so easy to use that I kicked myself for not having gotten one earlier.)

And that’s how I organize digital homeschool resources! If you have any tips or suggestions to share, please do so in the comments!

Ready to get a handle on your homeschool this year? Check out these posts!

Get more tips about how to plan your homeschool on my Homeschool Planning Pinterest board!