Homeschool/Office Shelving

 

 

Have you checked out the last couple rooms tours I shared? If not, you can catch them here and here.  I snapped some of the pictures one sunny day and supplemented with some I had on file because, our house has been an utter disaster. I have so many projects going on at once, rooms that are half finished, stacks of supplies and ugly furniture waiting for makeovers. One thing I love about blogging is the documentation. See. Now I have proof that I have accomplished things even if it does look like a bomb went off in here.

 

Now, I'm sure I've mentioned this, but my children are homeschooled. And, I obviously have this blog, so we spend a good part of the day in our classroom/office.  It's located on the first floor of our home, off of our kitchen and behind the dining room.  It. Is. So. Bad.  Honestly, I think this is where every single piece of furniture, rug and accessory goes to die.  It is a messy, mish mosh of stuff in a space where we are supposed to be our most creative. It doesn't work. At all. Further, a lot of the storage pieces have been moved into our older son's room for his makeover leaving everything in piles stacked up along the classroom floor.

 

And, we started a new method of school about a month ago, where we only tackle one subject a day and do way more hands on stuff (instead of workbooks).  So there are tons of supplies cluttering up the desks from that, combined with the fact that this month our work samples are due to the school district.  It's all kind of overwhelming. And nothing can get me more rattled than a big, old, cluttered mess. (That's not entirely true. When my nine year old with autism gets agitated in public and started telling people off, complete with appropriately used, albeit, horrifying four letter words I can become quite stressed myself, complete with hives.)

 

 

Anyhoo, my first order of business, which I have been slowly working on for months now, was to paint the room Benjamin Moore's Owl Gray (so happy to be done).  Secondly, I repainted some repuposed shelves bright white. (I had gotten one set done probably a month and half ago, but just finished the second, larger set this past week.) 


 

So, my goal was to get everything up off the floor, store completed school work down cellar (I have a little area where I keep extra books, school supplies and worksheets) and make everything as neutral as possible.   Since a lot of things will be out, and because I think that children are more apt to use things (and put them away) when they are visible I felt that it was really necessary to keep to as neutral of a palate at possible so to not overwhelm the eyes and to keep with the feeling of the rest of our home.




Realistically, this is just way too much stuff, way too visible, for my liking, but we are committed to homeschooling our children (we're on year 4) and this is what is working for us right now.  You can see most of our office supplies (which are sorted into different jars based on how and when we use them and the flowered magazine holder contains various lesson plans for our current studies.





In addition to the glass containers to store our office supplies and paints, I used that huge chartreuse tool box I redid last summer.  It's perfect for containing all of our flashcards and small learning tools.  All the art books are neatly lined up next to the paint and the IKEA magazine holders hold scrap paper and National Geographic Kids issues (the favorite magazine in our home).  I also added our vintage light up globe and Japanese maneki-neko figurines.
 

So what do you think? How do you have your office, classroom or craft room set up?  Any other homeschoolers out there with some fantastic organization tips for me? Please, please share.

 

Linking to:

http://linda-coastalcharm.blogspot.com/2013/02/nifty-thrifty-tuesday-no151.html http://www.jenniferrizzo.com/   http://www.savvysouthernstyle.net/