Homeschooling with very little room, how do you do it?

[A home for their hearts]

We are living in a very small house, there is very little storage, especially for 7 people. I feel like the walls are closing in on me all the time. I have already purged a lot of stuff, books, toys, clothes, etc. but I look around and still feel like we have no room. There is clutter all around simply because our closets are already overflowing and there simply isn't space for everything. I only have one bookshelf for all of our homeschooling books, games and supplies because thats all we have room for and it's still not enough. The rest is in boxes against the wall.

For those of you who have a large family and little space how do you do it????

 

:bigear:

[Carrie12345]

I've conditioned myself to become partially blind to the stacks of books and paper! :glare:

It's Saturday, and there are school books on the main bookshelf, on my dining room table, on the side table, on the coffee table, on the end table, in front of the fireplace (on the floor) and in ds's bedroom. I'm sure there may be a few in the girls' room, too. You don't want to see it on a weekday!

(And this is just curriculum/texts. There are yet MORE books scattered just about everywhere!)

[Rosy]

We moved to the house we're in two years ago, before that we were in an 1100 sq ft house. We had a bookcase in the living room that pretty much only had homeschooling stuff. We had another bookcase at the end of the hall, and the kids had some books in their rooms. We had to clean up the dining table every day, and we often had piles on the counter between the kitchen and the dining room. Half of the time papers were spilling over onto the oven.

 

At that point the middles were barely doing anything. DD10 would do anything that needed quiet in her room or my room. DD5 watched PBS when I was schooling the other kids. We just shuffled everyone around the best we could. We also had a grocery store that had a staffed play area (now closed), I would sometimes drop the younger kids off and have my older DD do school, or I'd just drop them all off and get a break.

 

Now I'd probably just take them to the library if I needed more space...but that could be hard with younger kids. It depends on the family.

[dakarimom5]

I have 6 people in a house that is 1192 sq. ft. We have 3 bedrooms, a den and a sewing-homeschool-media room that is 10x12 ( if I remember correctly from measuring last time). My computer is in this room a long with my tv, sewing machines, and one half wall that holds all my hs supplies and some of my sewing stuff. I have a table in the room too but it is hardly ever used for hs.

 

We hs everywhere else!! SOTW is done in my bed, math on the couch, handwriting wherever...you get the point. I try to keep the bulk of stuff on the table in the hs room but it doesn't always work.

 

Right now I have a basket of books in the bathroom where it seems my children are reading about Egypt.:D

 

One thing that does help is to weed through and only keep accessable what you are using right now...store everything else.

[Audrey]

We are living in a very small house, there is very little storage, especially for 7 people. I feel like the walls are closing in on me all the time. I have already purged a lot of stuff, books, toys, clothes, etc. but I look around and still feel like we have no room. There is clutter all around simply because our closets are already overflowing and there simply isn't space for everything. I only have one bookshelf for all of our homeschooling books, games and supplies because thats all we have room for and it's still not enough. The rest is in boxes against the wall.

For those of you who have a large family and little space how do you do it????

 

:bigear:

 

 

I have a lot of rooms, but they are all small rooms (old farmhouse, that's the way it is). I like furniture with storage. That helps keep the clutter down. Or, you could try putting storage boxes under the sofa (if there is room there). Ottomans with hollow insides and a hinged seat/lid are great instead of a coffee table. Anything that can do double-duty as itself and extra storage will help you.

 

I also found that once I stopped trying every curriculum under the sun, and settled on the ones that actually proved to work for us, I have a LOT less school stuff around. Likewise, instead of buying all the books we use and read, I use the library for all but our core curriculum.

[fairfarmhand]

my dh hung mounted book cases above my dd's desk for her stuff. I like these shelves because they can be hung over a piece of furniture, thus saving floor space and they are cheap. Just a few metal brackets with painted shelving board on them.

[Wheres Toto]

I have a very small house and a destructive 3 year old so everything has to be kept out of her reach. We are 5 people in 750 square feet. We only have 2 half-size closets in the whole house, one in each of the two bedrooms. Both are needed for clothes.

 

We build a 7 x 8 foot room out of the corner of our living room that holds our bed (king size) and desktop computer. The living room has two Billy bookcases with the top back panel removed, in front of windows on either side of our fireplace. The removal of the panels allows light in through the gaps between books and other items on the shelves. We also have a skylight so this doesn't take away too much of the natural light in the room. The bottoms of these have doors with baby-proof latches on them. We also have a shelf over the door to our bedroom, two bulletin boards high up on one wall (the bottoms are about 4 1/2 feet up) with two chalkboards underneath. Our (flat-screen) television is up on the mantle along with our blue-ray and satellite box.

 

I have this pocket chart on the inside of my bedroom door to organize ds's school work. Since the door opens right into the living room I can open the door and we are ready for school. To keep dd away from it outside school times, I just close (and lock) the door.

 

We use a folding table similar to these for school. At the lowest setting it is perfect height for chairs from their kiddie table. At the next higher setting, it's perfect for sitting on the couch. It folds away when school is done. It's not very big but usually only ds is working at it. If dd wants to paint or color while he's doing school I set up a small kiddie card table (it has a padded top so not good for school work) just for her.

 

The kids bedroom holds their bed, all our dressers and 3 six foot workroom cabinets with baby-proof latches on the doors. One holds any curriculum items not currently being used on a daily basis. The other two hold toys (I try to limit the number of toys out at a time). Whatever toys are currently in use are stored in drawers under their bed.

 

Our dining room table is a nook with storage bench seating. I don't use it for school stuff because it's almost always covered in so much stuff they are not easy to reach.

 

I don't know if any of these suggestions would work for you. Mostly I just find it frustrating on a daily basis.

[Georgiana Daniels]

I know my kidlets are little, but...

 

....for now we keep all their school stuff in milk crates. Anything that is used for both kids goes in a mommy crate. Books in bookshelves as much as possible.

 

It wouldn't be ideal for older kids who have more books/supplies, but maybe?

[*~Tina~*]

Here's a link to a recent thread that has lots of good ideas for hsing in a small space. . .

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=234476

[Homemama2]

For awhile we were hsing in our kitchen and I cleaned out a kitchen cupboard for our stuff. Part of our day included cleanup....nobody was allowed to be done w/ school until the kitchen was cleaned up and everything put away w/ table set for dinner. We also didn't do alot of big messy projects because we simply didn't have the room for them (waited till the weather was warm to do a volcano so we could do the whole thing outside, for example.)

[6packofun]

As much vertical and "under" storage as possible for things you don't need on a regular basis and I found a nice, 6-cubby bookshelf that fits a good sized bin for each child to have their own school storage. If it didn't fit in there, we had to decide if it was needed anymore or could be stored elsewhere. My kids love having their own bin/cubby and now that we're in a bigger house we still use it.

 

Another thing we had to do was consolidate/slim down on *other* things (like linens/towels, etc.) that take up shelf space so that we could store more important things if needed. A bathroom or hall linen closet can hold just enough for what you need and then use the remaining space for school supplies. Kitchen cabinets can sometimes be consolidated to make room for school things.

 

If you can get bookshelf headboards/footboards in the bedrooms, that's a good place to put books and notebooks. Paperbacks fit nicely in under-the-bed storage bins! You may have friends or relatives who would be willing to house some of your rarely used items (holiday stuff, things that you don't want to give away or donate just yet, but don't have room for). Even one big box of stuff stored somewhere else can make a lot of space for you!