Brenda at Family Revised is hosting a "Keeping It Real, Homeschool Organization" meme. 

I encourage you to visit her blog and read her post.  I'm going to share pictures of our school room in it's current state and then after pictures when I'm done with it's makeover.

I love having a separate room to school in. 

 Keeping the books and stuff in it's own spot, helps to keep our home a little better organized.  The difficult thing for me is willing myself to stay in the school room and do school.  Like Brenda mentions in her post, she started in a school room, then they moved to the kitchen table.  I love to be upstairs in the kitchen puttering around while the girls do their work.  The problem with that is I'm not totally focused on their learning.   One of my goals for this school year is to keep myself focused on their learning.  It is a matter of discipline and I'm praying for God's strength and direction.  Last year Elizabeth needed a desk, so I gave up my desk to Jennifer, her desk went to Elizabeth.  The bench I choose to sat on killed my back!   My husband and I were coming back from the grocery store one night and found a desk on the curb.  I knew the couple who had put it on the curb, I went to the door and asked if we could have it.  I had taken care of their daughter in the NICU and they were excited to give it to me. 


Our basement is finished and has two closets for storage. 

This is the school room closet, in it's current messy state.   Three of the four shelves will be decluttered and their contents moved to this closet.
I didn't think this closet looked to bad, then I looked at the pictures.  Yikes!  It needs a purging too.

Now I'm a little embarassed to show the next photos.  This isn't my usual style of house keeping, but I'm keeping it real. 

Here is a picture from the door.  Once the school room closet is cleaned out, the books can be organized into it's shelves. 

My plan is to totally take everything out of the room and paint the room.  I'm looking at a pale yellow paint to keep it cheery.  I will replace the window valance with a calico that has green and yellow in it.  Jennifer can easily stitch it up on her sewing machine.  I also want Jennifer to rewrite our homeschool rules that you see on the door. 

I have a file cabinet next to the desk pictured.  I have several stacks of file folders that need to be filed in there.   In the ads today Target has a two draw plastic cart on sale for $10, I will purchase it for Grace's school stuff.  I haven't incorporated her well into our school days, that will be changing this year. 

Another shot from the door.

These wonderful bookshelves are needing a purge also.  Everything will come off of them for the painting.  I hope in all of this purging I find a missing library book.  That is another story! 

This book shelf will come out of this room.  I want to have the wall space for maps, and more room for Grace's work area.  I am undecided whether I will use it in another area of our basement or sell it. 

Back on the wall you see the leaning tower of our homeschool room.  What I was thinking building that thing up, who knows?  It will be redistributed within the room after we paint.  


I love this white board.  My two older daughters are combination visual/audio learners.  I use this board a lot for their learning. 


Here is a few pictures of the living area next to our school room.
It is a mess in these pictures.   I had toys out to put in our garage sale, which will hopefully be sooner than later. 

This is the desk that will be moved into the school room.




We sit on this coach to read together.  Elizabeth watches her Math U See videos on the TV.  In the fall I'll put a table where the desk is currently setting.  This is a nice area to do crafts and let them dry.  I plan to hang gutter under that window for  free-reading time books.  Here is a link for the gutter bookshelf: Gutter Bookshelves



This area is will be open for us to do things on the floor.  Sometimes you just need some space to work with math manipulatives or do sit-ups.  It used to have our treadmill, but I moved it back to the storage room. It is a cut out area in the wall, so I may hang hooks with string on them, then we could hang our art work on it to dry.

As I've thought through our homeschool room make over it occurred to me.  Would I be motivated to purge our unused toys if I didn't need to make room for our school stuff?  I just see less and less emphasis in our home on a lot of fluff toys and more focus on learning toys.  Part of this is because my daughters are growing up and don't want as many toys.  But it also the influence that homeschooling has had on our lives. 

I look forward to sharing my after pictures, in a few weeks. I'm grateful that my home team will be helping with this project.  I couldn't do it without them. 

~Blessed by His faithful love and unending provision,