Homeschool Organization: What Worked This Year

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If you’ve been homeschooling for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed that things are always changing:

• School used to be done before noon, but now your kids are still working after lunch.

• The child who loved one-on-one lessons is now a middle schooler who wants to do everything by himself.

• The baby is now a toddler and your beautiful flashcard setup is in ruins — again.

I don’t have a “toddler tornado” right now, but my children are still growing and changing. And that means I’m constantly refining the way I organize our homeschool materials!

Here’s what worked this year:

The Tried-and-True

I learned about these storage bins from another homeschool mom and they’ve been a complete game-changer for us. This was our second year using them and I’m still in love!

Instead of the kids shoving, cramming, and piling books and papers on shelves, they each have a bin that holds all their current materials.

The bins were also incredibly helpful for co-op. Instead of trying to remember all the books we needed, everyone just picked up their bin and went to the car.

When we came home, they took their bin inside and put it back where it belonged.

Easy peasy lemon squeezy (as my daughter says).

Another trick that has stayed with us: these Sistema lunch containers that we use for flashcard storage.

They even fit inside the older kids’ bins!

New and Awesome

Confession: if I don’t keep phonics and math flashcards in sight and within reach…I don’t bother doing them.

To solve this, I’ve used a couple of different setups over the years, but this one is by far my favorite!

This is our phonics basket. It holds our phonics flashcards (upside down so I can easily thumb through and find the right number), Classical Phonics book, and homemade alphabet tiles and word cards.

I also keep our colored pencils and States & Capitals flashcards in here.

Our math basket holds our math flashcards, our hundred chart, and some homemade number cards.

We still have plenty of room to work, but if we happen to need more space, it’s easy to slide the baskets under the cork-board.

Necessary Extras

Up until a month ago, I didn’t have a place for flashcards and DVDs that we aren’t using now but will need in the future.

When we updated the school room, I went through the cards and got rid of anything unnecessary. The remaining small cards were put in our Sistema containers and larger cards were put in this Really Useful Box.

The DVDs went into this basket. I keep it on top of the bookshelf with the Really Useful Box.

Needs Work

I was really happy with this math bin when I first put it together. It holds all the blacklines for Rod & Staff math, grades 1-3, as well as our homemade cover sheets/whiteboards.

While it’s easy to find the blacklines we need, the hanging folders are clunky and it’s hard to access the other activity sheets we store here.

I’m going to try a new setup this summer, based on something I saw in my daughter’s Catechesis of the Good Shepherd atrium.

They use small folders and letter holders to organize some of the paper-based activities; everything is very accessible while also looking clean and uncluttered.

I’ll be sure to share progress on this during the summer!

What organizational hacks worked for you this year?