At the end of last year’s school, I found that my homeschool cabinet was quite the mess. It’s easy to let the shelves and drawers become a catch-all for all the stray papers and cute drawings that the kids have done throughout the year. But, if I remember right, that became a problem towards the end of the school year. Things were falling out of the cabinet as I would reach for each child’s books for the day. That became quite a nuisance, especially since I was nine months pregnant at the end of the school year. Bending down to pick up various objects over and over was not a fun thing to do.

This year, before school started, I cleaned out that school cabinet. It is now back down to the essentials. No more little toys hanging out in there or stray pencils or broken crayons. Everything has its place and everything is in its place. I purchased some of those disposable plastic containers and put all the crayons in one and all the markers in another. All the pencils are in their own container, too. The scratch paper and the construction paper have their own homes on the bottom shelves and all the scissors and tape and glue sticks are safe in their own special basket, too.

It’s so much more pleasant to reach in and grab a book and not have to worry about a dozen other things potentially falling out. It’s great to be able to know exactly where a certain supply is and be able to get to it quickly without having to dig for it through the mess. But truthfully, that’s how last year’s school started out, too. Nice and clean and organized.

So what am I going to do differently this year, to make sure that the mess doesn’t sneak back into the cabinet?

Well, here’s the plan of attack. At the end of each school day, all school books will return to their place in their proper boxes or on their proper shelf. Any stray papers that are not needed will go directly into the garbage. Anything that is just too cute, like drawings or super well-done papers, that I don’t have the heart to throw away, will go in a special binder. At the end of each month, I will go through that binder and cull out the things that I don’t think are truly necessary. (That’s not gonna be easy, but it will be essential with as many kids as I have! Otherwise, our school room would be overtaken with all the “cute” papers that I want to save!)

If you have any cool ideas for keeping your homeschool room area neat and organized, I’d love to hear about them!