Right now is about the time I look around my homeschool room and realize that things need a bit of sprucing up. The semester has been long and involved, and in the busyness of our school days things don’t always get put away or cleaned up on a regular basis.
Now the spoils of our homeschooling litter the floor, and basically the place is a mess. Which means I am ready to take some time out to get reorganized.
Every once and a while I like to take a good look around the room at what is working and what isn’t working. For the things that are not working I come up with a few creative solutions. Right now I want to share with you a few of the organizational things that are working for us.
Six Tools for Organizing Your Homeschool Room
Picnic Utensil Art Caddy
This wicker picnic utensil holder is perfect for holding some of our smaller art supplies. Paint brushes, water cups, water colors, pastels and other art supplies we don’t use daily fit right into the spaces of the caddy. It is compact and fits nicely under on our Ikea table shelves, easy to grab, and fairly easy to keep neat and tidy.
Glass Jars
I find glass jars in all sizes perfect for storing manipulatives, dice, and other small pieces. When stored in glass, the things I need are easy to find and become part of the room decor.
Magazine Holders
I have found no better way to store our large volume of thin picture books, and I have tried a few different methods. I sort the books by topic, put as many in the holder as I can, and label each spine.
When I need a book I can reach down and move each holder to the table to thumb through. It usually doesn’t take me too many attempts to find the one I need.
Diaper Caddy
Now I wouldn’t suggest going out and buying one of these if you don’t already have one you are no longer using, but I found our no-longer-needed diaper caddy perfect for storing our collection of cards of any kind — flashcards, art cards, memory work cards, etc. I rubber band the sets together and store them down in the various compartments. Then I slide the entire thing on the shelf.
Baskets!
Shop around your house for these or look for sales at your local craft stores. I look for neutral colors and love a variety of shapes and sizes for different purposes. Ours hold videos and CDs, math manipulatives — basically anything you need.
The beauty of baskets is that they cut down the visual clutter by storing a variety of things behind one solid surface. I also use them to store and group like things together — everything I need for morning time is in one easy-to-grab basket. Love it!
Buckets
These handy buckets come in a few different sizes and are usually pretty easy to find at the Target dollar spot. The colors you find will depend on the season you are shopping. I prefer the galvanized myself.
Homeschool materials are already so colorful. Neutral color storage containers help tone down all the busy in the room. We have buckets on the shelves with large erasers, manipulatives, small pencil sharpeners, and office supplies.
We also keep a collection of buckets on our lazy Susan to hold pencils, markers, dry erase, scissors, and glue — basically anything we are reaching for on a regular basis.
BONUS Seventh Tool
I can’t forget this one. These Sterilite Small Flip Top Storage Box
 What are your favorite tools for organizing your homeschool room?
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Love clear containers for storing manipulatives! You are right, not only is it easy to find what you want, but it adds a bit of color to the room, too!
Most anything in a glass jar is just so pretty! 🙂
Love the ideas you share here. Especially the glass jars. I need to do this in some areas of our house to make things easier to find.
I absolutely love your ideas Pam. Especially the diaper caddy idea. I have a couple baskets that I love, but they’re an odd shape and make storing items in them a little difficult. I think I might try making a liner with pockets for them to see if I can make better use out of them.
Love these ideas – especially those glass jars. Now when we get through so many jars of bramble jam each week I can save them instead of recycling them!
We don’t have a home school room but I can use these tips on our playroom, it really needs a clear out and some reorganisation
Seems like everyone loves the glass jars as much as I do. We buy bulk foods and store them in glass jars in our kitchen. Always beautiful!
I also use medium to small sized pretty vases to store our colored pencils, paint brushes, and even the Crayola Twistables. It makes them easy to use and pretty to store!
That sounds lovely Liz.
Can you get ALL the cards from one AAR or AAS level in one box? An index card box won’t hold all the cards in one level, so I am looking for something that will.
Yes! Actually one box is too big for one level so I had two levels in a box until I needed to split them for different kids. Now I keep a cut off paper towel roll in the back to fill the empty space (fancy I know).
Thank you! That helps a lot. I have to do something to organize these cards better because, between the reading and spelling, I have 4 children using them! I am so frustrated with hunting for cards I need because they don’t fit in one index box. Or I find a stray card and can’t figure out where it goes–in a box or in the file cabinet?
My goodness, the magazine holders are simply GENIUS for holding those picture books! It honestly is so hard to store picture books without a chaotic mess, but this just looks perfect, especially when sorted by topic! Thanks so much for sharing!
Where do you find your glass jars?
Hi! I am looking at your Sterilite containers for AAR and AAS. Did you use one container per child and store both the AAS and AAR cards inside that one along with the specific dividers that All About Learning sells? Or did each child have two boxes? I read this post years ago and purchased these exact containers and have used them for lots of things!
And maybe this is a silly question? I have only ever uses AAS years ago, but am switching a few children back to both programs next year.
I think one container would hold both BUT that would mess with my brain. I typically had one subject (spelling or reading) and one level per container except in the case where a kid was finishing one level and moving on to the next or I was storing unused cards.