Homeschool World Forum

[mom2five]

After this year, I'm pulling my 1st grade son out of public school to homeschool. I have 5 kids, one is mostly at college, another graduated 2 years early and lives at home, the 3rd is in public high school and I'll have a 3 year old in private preschool and then there's the son I'm going to homeschool. We have a fairly small house for 7 people and I can't figure out how we're going to do this. Our kitchen is small (no room at all for a table) so all our meals are in our dining room that is open to the living room and main living space. Kids are already doubled up in bedrooms, so no extra bedroom to use for school stuff. We have a small family room that is the playroom/toy storage, but it's already packed. Even the basement is pretty full with my son's drumset and video game system, husbands tools and the laundry area. We use every square foot of our house!

I was planning to just do our schooling at the dining room table or in the living room and storing everything in plastic bins, but my husband is NOT happy about that. He thinks the table becomes a dumping ground already and then, at meal times, everything gets dumped somewhere else and we can't find things. Does anyone use their child's bedroom for schoolwork and/or storage? It's not my preference, especially since it's shared with a teen brother, but there's already a desk and I might be able to squeeze in a bookshelf. Maybe we could just use the bedroom desk and shelf for storage and still work downstairs in the dining room?

Please don't tell me to just declutter because I do that constantly. With children of different ages and sexes, we have to accommodate many different storage needs. I just cannot think of a way to store curriculum and projects in progress!

[Theodore]

It's always going to be most convenient to store the curriculum where it's going to be used - possibly next to a couch in your living room? Just get a small crate, put everything in that, and pull it out whenever you're teaching your son.
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[Jill]

We have a nice big basket for our stuff by the couch. It looks alot better than a plastic bin. Only keep the stuff there that you are currently using. Other things could be kept under a bed or under a side table with a "skirt." We also put books we use alot under our coffee table in the living room. If you stack them and push them to right under the middle of the table, nobody ever even notices them.

Best wishes!
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Jill
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