Monday, August 24, 2015

Meanwhile...

What do you think when you hear "Meanwhile..."?  Does you brain complete that with "...back at the ranch"?

Mine completes it with "at the Hall of Justice"!  Ahem.

Actual View From Door
At any rate, when I returned from Colorado/Arkansas/the beach/scout camp/my folks/summer vacation, much to my surprise, no one had broken into the house and reorganized my home school room according to my exacting specifications.

Meaning, you still couldn't walk into the room.

I took this as a sign that I actually needed to break in and clean it myself.

 This process took many years decades hours.  Two days, really, because I also had to deal with all the home school overflow in my office!

Actual current view from door
But it's DONE!

I actually went through and tossed or passed on all the preschool to grade 2 stuff.

I went through all the books, games, toys, etc.

Part of the reason it was in such a state is that I hadn't done a major reorganization in a few years.

We've had some busy summers, but really  think it's because I dreaded giving away my "little kid" stuff.

I had such a lovely time when the Zoomlians were little, and I miss that age.

But I'm glad I did it!

The "little stuff" will make other littles happy, and now we can access everything for the kids I have now.

I moved all the books into my office (stuff in current use) or the guest room (stuff I'll need later), so the home school room is all the non book stuff.

I used the book case to hold pretzel bins full of projects.

We have bins for: Legos, dominoes, embroidery, shells, circuits, bones, tie dye, clay, cookie cutters, popsicle sticks, you name it!

I really like the bin idea because it's easy to take the whole bin out to use and it's easy to put it back.

That seems to be the key to successful organization for me: sad to say, if it isn't easy, I won't do it.

I still would like to organize the art shelves a bit better, but I actually know where everything is and can access any of it easily, which is a first in a long time!

Plus we redid the museum!  More on that tomorrow!







7 comments:

Queen of Carrots said...

I'm in awe. And trying to get the nerve up to face my one measly little homeschooling bookshelf. :P

Irene said...

Wow...great job!

Irene said...

Wow...great job!

Wendy said...

Thanks, I'm blushing! The Queen of Carrots knows the chaos that comes from home schooling, and Irene once cleaned out my car... :D

Michelle Widmer-Schultz said...

Now will you please come and clean my homeschool room? I feel so pressured now that you've cleaned yours!

Tracy said...

I love the pretzel bins! Can I just buy those somewhere, or do I have an excuse to eat a lot of pretzels?

Wendy said...

I got them from Sam's Club, and it was totally worth making the kids eat 16 bins of pretzels!

Ok, technically I've been saving them up for a few years because they seemed like such perfect storage containers. We eat pretzels instead of cookies during Lent, and it ends up being a LOT of pretzels.

And yes, having 16 pretzel bins on hand was part of the mess in the home school room!