Learning Space Redo | Your Morning Basket

I am sitting in our newly rebooted learning area. Does anyone else do this? At the end of a school term go through and take out all the items that have migrated their way into the main schooling area and spruce up the spot? Seems like I did it not too long ago, but this was a big reboot — all of last year’s curriculum and resources got put into storage (up the stairs shelves at our house) and all the new is now populating the shelves.

It was a necessary change for many reasons. We needed all the new stuff out so we could begin the new year next month (yikes!) and I needed it tidied so I could think. Visual person here. Clutter is like noise to me. And man it feels so good. Now I can sit here with everything at my fingertips and finish planning next school year, enjoying the neatness of it all. But it won’t be like this long…

Sure, I am talking about the clutter that is bound to creep its way back in — we live and learn here after all — but I am also talking about bigger and better changes than that. Our learning space just happens to be our formal dining space. You have likely figured out by now that we are not really formal dining room-type people. We far prefer the eat-in kitchen, breakfast bar, or back porch table. Even when family visits we already have far outgrown the table. Yet there was a time when our children were first born, that I dreamed of having a formal space and using it on a regular basis. So I picked out formal dining furniture and held fast to that idea even as it never naturally came to fruition.

One little corner of our learning space. The morning basket is on top of one shelf and my file crate the other. The file crate is where I keep all the teacher’s manuals and file folders we are using for the day.

When we moved into this house we dutifully set up that furniture in the proper spot. Our formal dining area is open to our living room and foyer — an open-concept space. The first year we lived in this house it sat there completely unused, but it always looked nice. Upstairs in our huge bonus room we set up a multipurpose space that included room for all of our homeschool and craft supplies as well as a kids’ TV and video game area, office space, and space for Dad. We tried schooling up there when we first set it up, but a number of things stymied us. We never found a baby gate that would fit the awkward opening at the top of the stairs, we felt removed from the rest of the house, there was carpeting; it just generally didn’t work.

So we ended up schooling in the breakfast area of the kitchen. I tucked little bookshelves around the room and we would school, then move everything and eat, then move it back and school some more. Meanwhile the formal dining area sat unused — pretty to look at for guests right inside the front door — but serving no purpose at all. Then I got over myself.

The overall space. I am standing in the open foyer to take the shot. The hall to the bedrooms is behind me. The door to the kitchen is across from me and the open living room is to the right. Truly the center of the home. The co-op supplies under the whiteboard are not usually there.

Last summer I moved all of the stuff into the formal dining area, hung a whiteboard and world map, and decided that to know us is to know we homeschool. When you walk in the front door of our home, you immediately know that learning takes place here and its sometimes messy. And it has worked great this year. The table is nice and big, we are right in the heart of the house where I can see everything, and we can spread out and use the entire downstairs for our learning. The only thing that wasn’t really working was the formal dining furniture. I kind of had a plan in mind, but it was on the back burner.

When Matt came home we did a walk-through of the house together pointing out things that needed to be re-done and repaired. The peeling (and oh-so-ugly) wallpaper in our bathroom? Yes, coming down and repainting. The rotten wood floor from a plumbing leak in the guest bath? Yep, having that tiled this month. The kids dark brown bedrooms? (Oh, sadly I do not lie.) Fresh coats of paint in light colors coming right up!

And then we walked into the living area. I threw out my first salvo. Could we please paint this area? The walls are terra cotta – the previous owners obviously couldn’t decide on an accent wall. It makes the entire area dark and somewhat pumpkin-y. Despite the cathedral ceilings in the living room, he readily agreed. Then he walked over to the formal dining furniture.

The final “station” holds mostly teacher supplies.

“What do you want to do about this furniture? It’s not really very practical for your schooling.” HA! Smart man was on my side, and I hadn’t even known it. So then I inundated him with Pinterest and ideas and schemes. Moving this from upstairs, changing that around, buying just a few more things…

The furniture is already on Craig’s List (anyone?) and I continue to gather ideas. The sale of the old furniture will fund the new space. Likely it will take some time to get it all how I want it, but I’m pretty excited. The goal is not so much “school room” as it is “space in the home where learning can happen.” I am over trying to hide our homeschooling from the main area of the house, but I really have no desire to recreate a public school classroom in my home. We don’t school that way, so I really don’t want it to look that way.

I have a Pinterest board here for inspiration and ideas. If you have a fantastic learning room or know of one online, give me a shout. I would love to see it.

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Pam

Pam is the author of The Your Morning Basket Guide and Plan Your Year: Homeschool Planning for Purpose and Peace. She also is the host of three popular podcasts -- The Homeschool Snapshots Podcast, Your Morning Basket, and The Homeschool Solutions Show. She lives in the Deep South with her husband and three kids, where she is the go-to lady for great curriculum recommendations or a just a pep talk on a rough day.