I know we have had threads on this before, but this one is a little different...I think. I have so much school stuff (curriculum, pens, pencils, paper, crayons, notepads, paper cutter, laminator etc) and I feel like it is all over the house! I am to the point that I really can't stand it any more and I want to throw it all out! I know we can't do that, so I am looking at other options. I practically need a whole extra room in our house just for the school stuff! We have an office in our house but my dh won't let me use it to store the school stuff....he claims he needs a "man cave" complete with tv, entertainment center (which is WAY to big...takes up the 12 foot wall), computer, couch etc. This is a really sore subject with him and after 4 years of trying to work it out I gave up on being able to put stuff in there. *sigh* Sooooo...I need an alternative idea. Do I completely convert the family room downstairs to a school room...which would include spending some $$ for shelving and a table and stuff, or what are your ideas??
Yes. I would convert the family room, and slowly let the kids take over "his" area with non-school stuff. Things like watching TV and just hanging out. (OK, that's my "sin nature" coming through, lol!!!) Seriously, I would convert the family room, I wasn't joking when I said that, just the part of taking over "his" space.
I'm anxious to see other's ideas on this. We just built a tiny little house--oops, I mean quaint little house. :lol: I am now feeling the space pinch and need some ideas. OUr school stuff is taking over our living/dining space.
do you get a "woman cave" or is he generous enough to let you have the laundry room all to yourself?.... sorry that was snarky, but I couldn't resist. We have a rolling cart in the dining room, which is where we do all our work anyway. Art supplies are in a kitchen cabinet....you know the more I think about it I have my stuff all over the house too!!!!
I have most stuff stored away in a bedroom closet. The things we need for the week are on a separate counter-high table in the dining room. It is working very well for us.
We usually "do school" at the kitchen table or snuggling on teh couch or my big bed. We have two book shelves specifically for school stuff. Anything that is "lose" like scissors, glue, hole punches, pencils, rock collections, laminating paper and things of that sort we store in plastic shoe boxes from Walmart of the Dollar store. They dont' take up much room at all.
Yeah, well, guess what -- I have a whole BUILDING that is 21'x40' on the inside, just one big square room with a little bitty corner taken out for a restroom, and I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH ROOM! Last year I had to buy a 10' storage building. In this one-room schoolhouse, I have 10 bookcases (assorted size and composition), a computer table, an 8' table we use for lunch and miscellaneous purposes, another one that holds a huge light-up globe, stacking storage boxes ("sweater" boxes) with school stuff in them, a stack of bins with more miscellaneous stuff, a file cabinet, two teacher desks with chairs,, two study carrels currently used for stacking miscellaneous books, a 4-person library table with chairs, a round library table, miscellaneous folding and straight chairs, what used to be a greeting card display rack with two drawers at the bottom that currently holds innumerable National Geographics, two computer towers and two monitors but only one keyboard and one mouse none of which are set up right now, one complete and functioning computer on the computer desk, and about eight stacks of books waist high waiting for more shelf space to put them. On the wall there's a large (maybe 3'x4'?) whiteboard, and a similarly sized bulletin board with a permanent display of a map of the world, a map of the US, and an old Sunday School poster depicting children in school saluting the American flag. Additionally, I have one tall freestanding broom/storage closet, and about a dozen student desks, of which five are currently occupied (but one must remain hopeful), and a milk-crate file box next to each one for individual student materials. And three kerosene heaters which of course will be put away probably next week when we'll get a week of spring followed immediately by six months of summer. This does not include innumerable collected texts and workbooks that are still at my house waiting to be taken to the school when I get a place arranged to put them, and a Mack truck to haul them! Y'all think I'm exaggerating, but I kid you not.
as soon as I have some ideas, I'll share them! as it is I've just decided that we'll live with the "chaos decor"
We were lucky enough to be buying our "long term" house around the time I got serious about homeschooling. So we found one with an extra Master Bdrm in the basement. It has a walk in closet that I have claimed as my own for craft supplies and school stuff. The room is large enough to have a few book cases a craft table and a reading area, but we do work books upstairs. Dh also has an office upstairs, and I managed to get him to let me put a small cupboard in there for things we need to have more accessible. He hates clutter above all, so that really goes in my favor! I vote for finding a way for you to have storage in the family room downstairs. I've seen one home where they had one wall lined with shelves and then sliding closet doors across that whole wall. It actually didn't look bad, and it really provided a lot of storage for them. You could also use curtains. I know my dh feels like the whole house is mine, and he "only" has his office. So I understand his resistance to sharing that space. Even if it is frustrating from our side. Hope you find a solution that works!
Try an Armoir. That is what I wanted and dh brought me home a huge shelfing unit with a desk that folds the computer up inside. That at least gave me a spot toput most of our stuff... Closed cabinets help me to put school away for the day or weekend or summer with out having to have it looming over me. IF you redo any of you family room then please think of getting an armoir, they have some with bulletin board inside the door, pencilholder etc inside the other doors and space for desk, bookshelf and computer shelves as well as printers! Then you can hang pictures or special work on the outside a schedule or school rules on the inside etc.
We converted our formal dining room (which never seemed to get much use) into our school room. I do prefer having everything in one place.
Ok - I have the house.... Joe gets the garage Seriously - he has such a small area in the basement it's sad considering the size of this house and since I don't let him smoke inside - he gets the garage. Ok...... so the man built a 50x70 storage garage which is bigger than most people's houses.... but still - I paid him back by getting the pool (HEY - IT'S PE!!!!) Onto organization - yes - convert your family room. I don't have a "school area" I have stuff spread all over. But I do have places to put basic craft stuff....
When we lived in our ranch home, we converted the eat in kitchen into our homeschool area. It was a big selling point when we bought the house. Now we have a loft upstairs which we use - my biggest issue now is saving up enough $ for bookcases . . .
I use the top shelf of the children's closet to store things I don't use daily, and things that I'm not ready to use yet. Then I have an armoir in the living room that I use to store our school books, and supplies that get used frequently. I used to have a classroom in our old place but when we moved there wasn't room to keep that, but it still works out fine. I also have some items stored in my closet (things that I RARELY use, and things that I need to sell/give away)
I'd use the FR. I only have one child, but I go back and forth between decking out our FR and decking out the back room, which is my office. I'm about ready to make the switch to the FR again. I'm here 24/7 and I need change! Do you have a linen or coat closet you can repurpose for your things?
I would take over the family room and arrange it as best you can. We have stuff all over right now because we are in a small apartment. I dream of having a place large enough to have one room devoted to homeschool stuff. Right now I have the books we aren't using in boxes in the garage and the rest on bookshelves all over the place.
LOL!!! That was so funny I actually laughed out loud! Yes the laundry room is mine (he claims he doesn't know how to work the washer....haha...his mother says he did his own laundry all growing up...maybe he "forgot")...but the rest of the house is mine too. I am having such a dilema...debating with myself over what needs to happen. I think if we switch the family room over to the schoolroom it will work the best, but I also don't like that it's in the basement where there is little to no natural light. All I want in the office is a place to put a armoire or something like that to store the extra stuff, but currently there is no wall space. Right now, we school and have most of the school stuff in the dining room, but my dh HATES and I mean HATES that it is always cluttered and the table always has so much stuff on it that we can't use the dining room to eat together. There is no other place in the house we can eat together. Actually the solution to the problem would be to move cause the house is too small. BUT we love, love, LOVE our neighbors and because we are renting from my dh's grandma and she is leaving us the house when she dies...moving is not an option until then. She is nearly 90, so who knows how long that will be. I think I will convert the family room for now. If it ends up that I hate it in the basement then I will just go back to the dinning room....*sigh*
I don't know if this is an option for you or not. We use our dining room most of the time, so I installed a bunch of cabinets on a wall in there. Some of them I have to use for other things because our kitchen is so small, so I also steal office space, but the cabinets were some prefab ones that we got cheap and we just added crown molding to make them look nice. That gives us extra counter space and cabinets that can be closed to hide the mess. We arranged it with the deep pantry type cabinets on each side of the counter space, and I have two banks of drawers a large lower cabinet in the middle and four upper cabinets. It looks good and only took about a day and $1000.
Min, I would choose the basement, it will be quieter there too! more set aside than the dining area i am guessing? our family room has been class room to more family than class to now its kinda in between, I have posters up on one wall, sometimes two that help with things like writting a prargraph Astronomy class etc, can you do that in your basement/family room? Do you have room for making like stations? NOt sure what you can find for like shelf or table stuff but if you could use space for science stuff, things the kids collect on nature walks could go there, or feild trip stuff etc. We had a science table, the bird took over the shelf, so I have a shelf hatat sits with books I probably would use BUT.. the bird is there and feathers and I dont mix lol Hubby was gonna let the bird fly today but since I am sick with bronchitis he kept it caged whew! So, we have a small garage sale or craigs list cabinet that houses things like Games, old TMs and such even some notebooks that are partly used.. crayon boxes glue etc are in another cabinet, Printer paper on a shelf on the big armoir type shelf thingy.. I had do much fun when my kids were all home and doing school, we got some five dolalr desks from garage sale left overs and rebuilt a couple our church school was tossing, so we had a real class room /family room for a couple years there , I miss those days! Now I have one home schooling, one at a school that does home school curic but there is a teacher who does not get Alg2 headache hahah, so things are geared for HIS learning station.
