New year, better organisation.. hopefully
Like many of my other homeschooling friends, I try to start the new year with everything being a bit more orderly than last year. I was quite delighted with my purchases and slightly tidier homeschool room. Here’s what we did..
Kmart purchases
It’s funny what we often put up with for so long! For instance, for years and years we’ve had a clear file folder for maths speed tests, which inevitably resulted in torn plastic pages and a big mess.
I finally got fed up with it and set out to look for something tidier and more user-friendly. Kmart is great! I bought this drawer set and put it inside a cupboard – problem solved! Why did I not think of this before?!
After reading Sarah Mackenzie’s book “The Read Aloud Family” (affiliate link) I decided to tidy up our activity book shelf and group them into sections that could easily be pulled out for read aloud time – here’s what I used:
I purchased yet another set of drawers (I really love those drawers!) for the kids to keep their ‘work in progress’ i.e. unfinished art or tests that have nowhere else to go. So much tidier!
Finally, I wanted something to keep often-used stationery items and unused refill paper on, so decided to try out this paper tray, also from Kmart. There is also room to put stickers for the kid’s work and a box of felt-tips, bonus! There is a separate filing tray for work to be marked, and also a box inside the drawer for scrap paper. The key really is to have a definite place for everything.
Honestly, the hard part in reorganising is not going overboard and buying every interesting looking storage item in the place! I love creating order out of chaos and finding better ways for things to work, so it seems totally worth the cost!
Tidy up strategy
My husband and I got really sick of the house never *quite* being tidied up properly, and of the tidy up seeming to take forever. So we seem to have hit on a winning strategy.. for the time being at least. (Things seem to get re-jigged quite regularly with kids!)
The deal is that at a certain time in the afternoon (4 or 4.30pm) I set a timer for 30 minutes and all the kids have to get the place looking as it should – i.e. things in their correct places and nothing lying about on the floor. If they do a good job and get it done in that time, they retain the right to their non-essential snack food the next day (eg Anzac slice or crackers at morning and afternoon tea time) and they get the reward of either watching something short before dinner or doing something else fun, rather than wasting all that time on (not) tidying up!
It probably helped that the first day we instituted this, we put everything on the floor into black sacks, which now has to be earned back slowly – toys, clothes etc – each child can pick one after a good day’s tidy.
So far this has resulted in a much nicer looking house, and a more efficient use of everyone’s time. Hopefully we all keep it up! To be honest, a huge part of its continued success will require me being onto it and actually doing the timing and checking – something I know from past experience can easily go out the window.
Here’s to a (hopefully) more organised 2023!
