The trap of homeschooling is letting clutter pile up. You’re skirting the line of what is school and what is home, which can lead to much clutter throughout both. By keeping your items organized and your house life separate from school, you’ll be able to curate a safe and active learning space for your kids. The best way to stay on top of everything that homeschooling throws at you is to actively and effectively organize. This means having many different homeschool storage and clutter reduction methods in place.
Whether you’re sticking with the classic boxes and baskets or you’re implementing devices of your own creation, cleanliness is key for an effective homeschooling environment. Many parents are already overwhelmed and burdened by the need to plan lessons, adhere to the curriculum, and keep their little ones in line. Developing storage plans to help with organization can place even more on their shoulders.
Here are some of the best homeschool storage tips for parents. These tips range from storage supplies that are a must to cool projects you can work on to help keep things organized. These are our favorite storage methods and are sure to keep your at-home school running at peak performance.
Our Top Homeschool Storage Solutions
Many of the suggestions in this section might seem obvious, but they are some of the best ways to reduce clutter in the classroom. Sometimes, the best homeschool storage solutions are right in front of you.
Shelves, Tubs, and Jars!
The real benefit of these three homeschool organization tactics is that they’re accessible to all. You can store almost anything into tubs and jars, and most homes have shelves somewhere that you can transform into homeschool storage. We cannot recommend these items enough when you want to store things throughout the year.
Shelves
When you have a homeschool classroom, easy access throughout the day is a great way to keep the learning flowing. It’s already tough to keep your kids focused on the lesson, so taking time to find books and work when it’s not readily available will create lulls in the curriculum. All of the items you need throughout the day are right on display and ready to be used with shelves.
This makes organizing binders and folders simple. The way you organize your shelf – whether by curriculum or chronology – is completely up to you. As long as you have access to a sturdy shelf that allows you to store things throughout the year on it, you’ll be one step ahead of most cluttered homeschool classrooms. Shelves can easily be found at furniture stores like Ikea or built yourself for extra customization.
Tubs
Using tubs and bins to store items and supplies throughout the year is a great way to eliminate clutter throughout the classroom. You now have a fantastic way to organize things into specific storage bins that can be stowed away, out of sight when not in use. Bins, baskets, and even boxes can be used as tubs for items so that you don’t have to break the bank on a new collection of storage tools.
The best part of these tubs is that you can put almost anything and everything in them without having to worry about things cluttering the classroom. You can organize them however you like and store them away to take up too much space. These bins, baskets, and boxes will help you keep the homeschool room looking great while holding everything in one, organized place.
And Jars!
Jars are some of our favorite homeschool storage solutions. This schoolroom fix is a great way to keep desks and student workspaces clean and organized. You can place jars on each of your kids’ desks for them to keep their pens and pencils in.
While students do tend to be much messier than the teachers, the organization still matters to them, and you’ll see them using the storage jars much more than you might expect. Jars can be found almost anywhere and can even be sourced from recycled materials. The ease of access and incredible help they offer the classroom makes them one of our favorite homeschool storage solutions.
Don’t Be Afraid to DIY
None of the things you want to use are readily available? Make them yourself! You don’t need to be an expert in handy work and using tools to build yourself a shelf, and there are countless books and videos online for you to find that can help you through the process. I’m no expert builder, but the shelves I built for my homeschool classroom proved to be some of the most useful storage units I could find.
Doing it yourself allows you to put your own creative spin on the project. Chances are, you’re going to need more storage than you might expect, even after purchasing a shelving unit or an army of boxes and bins. By building everything yourself, you can make the shelves accommodate you without spending too much on tools and items. You can find many ideas online that will help you transform your clutter into an organized space for learning.
A Cute Homeschool Organization Hideaway
In many homes, storage is right out in the open. Even with the best homeschool storage solutions, making a supplies room look organized isn’t easy. To reduce the clutter and keep everything you see looking clean, it’s useful to add a little curtain over the storage space. This will put things in their own separate space. You won’t have to see the boxes of paper throughout the year or the endless supplies and books currently used.
This is a fantastic way to keep your homeschool storage solutions clean and stored away throughout the year. By simply hanging a curtain over the space you want to store your supplies, you’re effectively creating a closet within the classroom. Chances are, this too will become cluttered, and you’ll have to add more “closets” later on as the year progress, but by even just creating one spot for the bins you’re using, you’re making great strides to clean the room of clutter.
Dual Purpose Furniture
Something that adults will like and kids will love is the inclusion of multi-purpose furniture ideas. Students can store their books, work, and paper away in bins that can double as seating. The homeschool storage solutions don’t end with seats that double as bins. The ways you can store homeschool supplies in furniture are endless if you’re creative! (Or have access to creative forums online.) Keeping the homeschool classroom mess-free can be a challenging task, but with some creative ideas, you’re well on your way to finding the storage space you need.
Binders Galore!
We cannot stress this enough: binders are a teacher’s best friend, especially when it comes to homeschooling. Binders offer some of the best ways to add storage space to your homeschool classroom. You can keep everything you need in a binder, organize it by year, segment them based on the curriculum, and keep them stowed away without taking up too much space. What you get with binders is an organization like no other device. Set them up in a method that makes sense to you, add them to your supplies closet, and come back to get what you need, when you need it.
Having a Dedicated Homeschool Room
Two separate spaces are a must when it comes to homeschool learning. If you’re teaching your students in the living room, you might find that they get distracted easily or don’t perform well. To make the most out of homeschool, you need to set up a dedicated classroom early on and refer to it throughout the years of homeschooling.
By keeping the family rooms and homeschool rooms as two separate spaces, you’ll begin to get a better response from your kids. They’ll perform well once the distinction between the two areas has been structurally set.
School Room Time vs. Home Time
Along with two separate rooms comes the necessity of two separate portions of the day. Your students need to understand that when school is in session, you’re the teacher, and they’re the students. When school is done, you’re family again, and the dynamic switches. This separation of family and classroom is one of the best ways to have the dynamic remain organized throughout the year.
Online Organization
If you go online for homeschool teaching, you’ll find post after post about fantastic lessons you can use to boost your students’ performance. From amazing lessons created by other teachers to fun programs for everyone, online assistance will play a major part in your homeschooling. However, with all of the well-made programs comes the risk of spam. Keeping your online access clean and clear is just as important as keeping the classroom organized in the long run.
Finding Programs for Homeschool Use
Many curriculums use online programs for learning. You can find many fantastic homeschool programs that your students will love. With fun online learning, you can have them remain focused on the lesson at hand without having to force them into it. Students love online teaching, and you’ll notice them begin to perform well with segmented introductions. This means the inclusion of online lessons every so often, but not the whole curriculum.
Spam Filtering
As we transition into the online era, many curriculum-based lessons can be found online, accompanied by tests, worksheets, and grading criteria. The issue with everything being set online is that your email could get clogged with spam. Keeping your email clean is just as important as the homeschool classroom. Throughout the week, you might receive dozens of emails that are spam or clutter.
