Five Keys to Organizing Home School Materials

It will come to no surprise to any home schooling parent that organizing home school books, papers and resources is one of the leading causes of stress for home schoolers. It is no wonder! We have seemingly endless numbers of books, completed and incompleted papers, lesson plans, resources to use now, ideas of what to use for future lessons, games and supplementary products to deal with.

What do we do with it all?

Five Keys to Organizing Your Home School

While I have a long way to go in terms of organization, living in a small house with four kids and my husband's office has taught me a few things. These are a few tips to get you started with organizing your home school materials. To make these keys easy to remember, think of REACH:

• Redefine clutter. Seriously. As much as you might want to have all horizontal surfaces clean all the time, realize that some clutter is a sign of thoughts in process, discovery going on, creativity being unbound. Organizing your home school work area might make your house look clean, but would it encourage your children to be creative and undertake projects that take more than an hour?

  How often you end up wanting to have those horizontal surfaces clean will probably vary depending on your personality and other stress levels in your life right now. You need to find a comfortable balance between organizing your home school and allowing creativity to blossom.

• Each person has responsibility. Make sure that your kids know what they are responsible for - what you expect and when. This may include only their own home schooling assignments and supplies, or it may include some of the common areas as well (one child takes responsibility for the bathroom, another child is in charge of the living room). In our family we found that rotating on a daily basis took too much time to organize, so we now rotate once a week for our chores.

• Act now. Doing just a little bit of organizing of your home school things every day can really make a difference. I try to think in twos- -- two minutes, and twenty minutes. In two minutes, I can file one photocopy of a great lesson resource. In twenty minutes I can straighten up and organize that drawer of math manipulatives. Get your kids thinking this way, too. This will help you all be on the same page.

• Create a place - even before you need it. I discovered this organization tip when I was setting up my bookmarks folder in my Internet browser. I realized that having set folders already waiting for me to put in bookmarks that I would find was a big time-saver. For example, here's a look at some of the folders in my browswer:
  • Home Schooling
    • Math
      • Abacus
      • Living Math-type sites
      • Math Challenges and Puzzles
      • Math Cool Things
      • Math Curriculum
      • Math Flashcards
      • Math for Teachers
      • Math Helps
      • Math History
      • Math Sudoku
      • Math Tricks and Mental Math
      • Math Worksheets
      • Offline Math Games
      • Online Math Games
    • Language Arts
      • Copywork
      • Literature
      • Phonics and Early Reading
      • Spelling
      • Vocabulary
      • Writing
    • Product Reviews

  This isn't necessarily the best way to organize my home school bookmarks or yours. My point is that by having set categories already in place, it saves time and helps me find what I'm looking for. I don't have to think each time I create a bookmark where to put it because I've already done the work in creating the categories to use.

  Well, I figured what works for inboxes also will work for all those art works, cards and papers that I want to keep of the kids but which seem to float around forever. So I bought a cheap binder with 20 or so clear pockets that open at the top and labeled it on the outside 2006. On each pocket inside I put a label on it:

  • Pocket 1 Child A's Name Artwork
  • Pocket 2 Child A's Name Cards to
  • Pocket 3 Child A's Name Cards from
  • Pocket 4 Child A's Name Other
  • Pocket 5 Child B's Name Artwork
  • Pocket 6 Child B's Name Cards to
  • Pocket 7 Child B's Name Cards from
  • Pocket 8 Child B's Name Other

  Now, each time I have something I want to save that doesn't exactly go in his home schooling portfolio, I know right where to put it. Wow, what a de-stressor this has been!

  What about you? What area of your home schooling could benefit from having you think ahead of time about a place to put them?

• How is this used and by whom? If there is something for your home schooling that is used often, make sure it is accessible. For example, in our house, our paper recycling boxes are near our entryway. This isn't exactly pretty, but it is very functional. It is easy for all of us - even the youngest member of our family - to know how to recycle their unwanted paper materials.

  If things are cluttering up your horizontal surfaces (tops of counters, bookshelves, desks, etc.) and they really aren't being used very often, try putting them out of sight. We boxed up some old curriculum that wasn't working for us and freed up an entire shelf for books. I'm not quite ready to get rid of the stuff, but I don't need it on a daily basis, either. Are there things you don't need to keep handy that are taking up space?

  Asking yourself about how something is used will also help as you create the most logical place for it to go. Sometimes that may be a place easily accessible to everyone, like our recycling boxes. Sometimes that may mean moving something to your child's desk, or even boxing it up for a time.

  Lastly, in organizing your home school supplies and resources, think about giving yourself a bit of free space -- shelves, tops of counters, desks, wherever -- to let your mind have some physical space to wander.

I hope these tips will get you started thinking about how you can organize your home school supplies and resources. If you have other tips, let me know via our Contact Us page.

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