Simple Homeschool Organization in a small space
How do you manage simple HOMESCHOOL ORGANIZATION IN A SMALL SPACE? It’s tricky when you don’t have a lot of space. Today I’m sharing how I carved out a small space in our dining room to create a farmhouse homeschool nook, plus the number one thing every homeschool room needs.
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When I had my fourth baby, I found myself homeschooling a kindergartener and preschooler, plus keeping a toddler busy and a newborn fed.
Our family of now six needed to carve out a space for learning time in our small farmhouse. Being the cozy enthusiast I am, I wanted something that was central but not overwhelming.
I didn’t want to makeover our dining room into a homeschool room. I love our 1834 home, and I didn’t want our big windows covered with posters, or our bookshelves to be too full of school that there wasn’t room for family books.
Even though we’re always learning all around our home, I really wanted a central place that we could store our books and supplies. But then, when our work is over? I wanted somewhere where we could close the doors and move onto the rest of our day.
Studies recommend that home offices aren’t in a bedroom because it blurs the line of work and relaxing time.
That was important to bring into our homeschool room. We needed to create a cozy homeschool room that inspired us to learn, but didn’t overwhelm the room. Like I said, we have books scattered all around our house. But the actual student workbooks, kid’s devotionals, and my teacher’s guides felt like they needed a homeschool home.
>> This worked great for my little learners! This is how I’m organizing our homeschool for 2024-2025!
Homeschool room storage that didn’t work
Before I jump into what works in our homeschool room, let me give a quick rundown of what didn’t work.
- A dedicated homeschool room: When we first started homeschooling last year, I planned to use our sunroom off of the dining room. A cute, picturesque room with big windows into the yard, and doors we could close on unfinished projects at the end of the day. This still sounds ideal, but in reality we didn’t need a whole room. We spent most of our time at the table or on the couch, that this space just went completely unused.
- IKEA Kallax: If you Google homeschool organization this will come up. I guarantee it! The problem I had came from the big storage bins. It was hard to organize the bins and keep them from getting cluttered. My kids collected and stashed paper scraps and half done art projects. We were cleaning them out every other day just to find the worksheets we needed! Plus, I’ll say it: the furniture piece itself is not my favorite look and didn’t match our old farmhouse style, which was important to me in such a central room.
So, I settled on the dining room. It’s sandwiched between the kitchen and living room, making it the most central room in the house. And I really think it promotes gathering the family for learning time. But since we use it all the time for eating, I wasn’t sure how to make it happen.
Then I saw the hutch.
Early American hutch
A few years ago, I picked up an old hutch that matches the time period of our house. I love this piece!
I chalk painted it dark green, and at first it lived in the sunroom to store all of our crafts. But it took no time to realize that a family of 3 small girls plus their knitting designer mom couldn’t fit all of our craft supplies inside. We’re very into slow living hobbies around here.
So we moved the hutch into the dining room.
But again, it wasn’t being used well. We don’t entertain and we have small kids who break stuff, so we didn’t want to display fancy wedding dishes.
So instead of forcing a new piece of furniture or storage system, I started filling up the hutch with homeschool supplies.
Benefits of using a hutch in our homeschool room:
- We already knew we liked the style in that space, since it had been there for awhile.
- If we outgrow it, we can use it in a new way instead of being stuck with a piece of furniture we don’t like. We can choose to put those fancy wedding dishes inside once the kids are older if we no longer use it for books.
- The bottom half of the hutch has solid wood doors, which excited me for two reasons: 1. At the end of the day, we close the doors and hide visual clutter. 2. The wood is heavy, and way too difficult to open for our toddler who gets into most things. This is why I think every homeschool room should have doors! Doors on a hutch, or doors into an actual room.
So let me show you how we actually use our homeschool room hutch
On top
The top half of our hutch is glass, which means I didn’t want any visual clutter here. With a large family, there are always a lot of toys out and I wanted something that didn’t add overwhelm. I decorated in neutral colors, mostly white on the top half.
The drawer
This is where we store scissors, pencils, tape, and other simple daily supplies. I also keep my kids’ workbooks, my teacher’s guides, and whatever chapter book or devotional we’re reading. Keeping everything together makes it easy to grab at once, especially if I’m also holding the baby.
Underneath
In the closed cabinets, Clara and Natalie store whatever workbook pages, unfinished art projects, and other things they’re not quite done with. They used to always ask where to put the half finished and completed things they made, but didn’t want to hang up. Instead of piling it on the kitchen counter, they know to put it away in their baskets until next time they work on it.
Which, oh my gosh, these baskets! They’re the best. I love them so much that I have four more in my yarn hutch! For school, I have two side by side and they just fit. I know that once James and Lucy are ready to be homeschooled, I can easily add two more baskets to the bottom shelf.
On the bottom shelf, for now, I have a place for miscellaneous stickers. The girls can use them for anything, or sometimes I’ll add them to Clara’s finished math pages.
I also use four shallow storage bins for toddler busy bins, similar to these. Since we do school Monday-Thursday, I label one for each day. Then I swap out an activity for Lucy to do while her big sisters are doing their schoolwork.
Some days it’s painting with water, and some days it’s unwrapping things with painter’s tape.
I switch it out every week to keep it fresh, in hopes that she’ll play nicely for a few minutes while I read!
Here are more of our favorites:
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No matter if we head to the living room to read, or the backyard for science, starting and ending our day at the hutch has helped us so much. It’s really where we gather and just helps our homeschool routine feel very cozy.
