I find it important to disclose that posts like organization and planning (many of my blog articles, but also blog articles outside of my own) should be read through a lens of simple inspiration for ideas and not as absolute truth or the one right way. I hope that no matter what you’re reading from my blog, that you can come away feeling inspired, encouraged and equipped for the role you are in, whether in motherhood or homeschooling, or both.
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The philosophy behind how I organize our homeschool space wouldn’t surprise you if you’ve been around here long. I love beauty. I love creating beauty and one of the areas I find joy in creating beauty is that within the walls of our home which includes the space we homeschool in.
“I believe that a godly home is a foretaste of heaven. Our homes, imperfect as they are, must be a haven from the chaos outside. They should be a reflection of our eternal home, where troubled souls find peace, weary hearts find rest, hungry bodies find refreshment, lonely pilgrims find communion, and wounded spirits find compassion.”
Jani Ortlund
So when it comes to organizing our homeschool materials, I like to intertwine the lines of home and homeschool, not having any real distinction between the two, reflecting the philosophy that education is both an atmosphere and a life.
“We think of beautiful spaces and comforting traditions as spiritually unnecessary and underestimate the profound importance of a safe place for growing minds and souls.”
sally clarkson
With my philosophy in mind, I then look to display our homeschool materials in a way that is both beautiful and ordered, yet useful and practical for our everyday. And that’s what this post is about, to show you how I organize our materials and books. We’ve been in 3 rental homes since we started homeschooling and with each house, I truly haven’t changed much even though each house is completely different in size and layout. In our time homeschooling, I’ve needed just 3 designated spaces for homeschool materials and that’s for books/curriculum, art supplies, and games, activities and math manipulatives.
Books and Curriculum
We follow a Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling which includes lots and lots of living books each year. When I knew we would be using Ambleside Online for more than the first year, and with more than one child, I began purchasing our books for our own home library (mostly gently-used from Thriftbooks or local Goodwills). Most of our books are kept in our bookshelves with the exception of picture books and some chapter books in the kids’ bedroom for their “reading rest time”/wind down time before falling asleep. I store all of our school books on these shelves as well as our Bible devotionals, nature books, biographies, poetry, history, and free reads for the year. I’m in the process of color coding our books by AO year with washi tape, and will have a color code key nearby for reference. With so many books coming into our home library each year, I’m trying to find a system for us in keeping track of what we own so we aren’t buying two or three copies of the same book (yes, this has happened before).
Our curriculum books for the year are all in one place which makes it easy for my kids or I to grab what we need and begin. We’ve tried storing them in magazine holders but didn’t like that they’d tip easily if you removed one too many at a time. I’ve also tried a rolling cart but found it to be more troublesome by trying to find a way to organize it in a way that it didn’t look super cluttered. This year we’re trying these book ends to store them on our shelves, but I’ve considered making room for them in one of the cabinets in the shelving unit to give me another full shelf for books. Any old curriculum books we are done using get stored away in a plastic tote or if permissible, I resell.
At the moment I have my mother culture basket and other homeschool books stored in the bookshelves as well. I like having a space to store my current mother culture books and notebooks, along with my homeschool planners and master binder but due to our ever-growing home library, these things are going to be relocated soon.
Art Supplies
This is the most used cabinet in our home and often rarely looks this organized. It isn’t the most beautiful sight to see (especially when the children are in it for more than a few minutes) but that’s what I love about our bookshelves and that all these things are tucked away inside the closed cabinet when finished with. I store all the art supplies my children are allowed to grab and use whenever they want in this cabinet. Included inside you’ll find all sorts of paper, coloring books, kid scissors, markers, colored pencils, watercolors, glue sticks, and brushes. We restock things throughout the year as needed and keep our more expensive brush drawing and watercolor paints and supplies out of reach until lessons. I continue to look for woven baskets when I thrift to store things more efficiently (and beautifully), but everything I see is either too deep or round, which doesn’t work for what we need. I’m always on the look out and am determined something will pop up that’ll be just right and for the right price. The art cabinet reorganization is on my Fall deep cleaning list (usually the time when we need to restock some things) so there is time.
Pencils are stored in a thrifted ceramic container between books and our pencil sharpener is tucked inside one of the cabinets for the kids to use anytime. We are always losing pencils so giving them their own place, visible on the shelves, helped everyone remember to put them back where they belong, and it lets me see and know when it’s time to restock.
Games, Activities, and Manipulatives
For our family, we play a lot of board games and puzzles when we’re home. Christmas and birthday gifts usually consist of one or two new games to our collection. I store all our games and puzzles in the same room as our bookshelves since that’s also where our big dining table is. In our current rental home, we have a front room where all these things are organized and it has worked really well as both a homeschool space and a place to host company. Our games our tucked inside a vertical cabinet we purchased from Target over a year ago.
Inside one of the three bookshelves I have other activities such as drawing books, art books, handicraft supplies, and activities my 4.5 year old will get out when we’re at the table doing lessons. Some of these activities are ABC robots, number locks, or wikki stix. I’m currently looking for some storage bins to organize our handicraft supplies a little better in the cabinet, but also considering storing them in our TV room off from the kitchen near our sofa for a cozier and more accessible place to grab and work on our handicraft projects.
Our math curriculum consists of several manipulatives such as counting blocks, plastic money, geometry blocks, abacus, calculators and clocks. I’ve found storing some of the little things in these craft containers was the simplest way to keep everything organized. We keep these inside one of the cabinets under our bookshelves where I also store our white board and dry erase markers, and a math dictionary.
Organizing our home and homeschool materials in a way that serves all who dwell in our home is an important task of mind that I genuinely enjoy doing. I want my children to feel like it’s their home too, without it overly stalked with toys in every corner (which they rarely gravitate towards anyways). I also want my hard working husband to come home and find rest and feel like he belongs here, too. So, I choose to fill our common rooms with materials and books that spark creativity, ideas, Truth, curiosity, and comfort. I aim to have cozy corners for reading or unwinding from a long day, wide tables for conversations, good meals, and games. Art supplies (and paper towels) easily accessible for anyone to get creative. And all this can be done with beauty and order in mind, which looks slightly different from family to family.
There are so many great organization tips out there, so I hope if you have some other ideas for how to organize home and homeschool that you’ll share in the comments with us!
