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Organized Home Schooler

An Organized Home Schooler? Yes! Here's where you will find out about how to get more organized as a home schooling mom/dad/family. You will find the best resources for keeping home school materials organized as well.

The past year and a half I have been getting an increasing number of calls from home schooling moms who are struggling with home organization. More times than not, these moms say things like:

"Erin, I've always been organized but since I started home schooling..."

"I have systems in place but they just aren't working"

or even

"Our home school materials are organized but somehow the rest of the house is a disaster!"

If any of these sentiments sound familiar to you, you've come to the right place.

Change Of Home Dynamics

You already know the benefits of home schooling so I won't address that here. But home schooling does bring a whole new dimension to your home! For starters, you and your children are home more! And if you're home more, then every inch of your home is being used 24/7.

You've added books, school supplies, paperwork, art supplies, science project equipment, lots and lots of educational materials. Of course all these things need to be contained or filed to stay organized, but you are also:

preparing more meals - increased use of kitchen
packing for field trips - more use of car and possibly lots of grab/drop and go of stuff
allowing more time for play - more frequent play/family room use
bathroom use - can't be avoided!
teens in room studying - using their rooms more than if they were at traditional school

The use of every room in your home is dramatically increased over that of families with public/privatly schooled children and parents who work full-time and/or part-time.

It's not surprising then that with this increased use comes a greater need for becoming an Organized Home Schooler.

Now I'm not a home school mom, but as a Professional Organizer I am working with moms who ARE homeschooling. At first I started to help these moms gain better control of the rest of their homes, hoping that by the time we got to the actual organizing of home schooling area/supplies that it would be a breeze.

It wasn't.

This presented a challenge for me so I set out to find ways to help these moms organize their "home schools."

A Great Resource For Home Schoolers

I found the book "The Organized Home Schooler" by Vicki Caruana one day as I perused our church library. The title jumped out at me I suppose because I had these home schooling moms on my mind a lot lately. I read the book from cover to cover and all I can say is it's a great resource. It's also been my saving grace on how to help my home schooling clients specifically with home schooling related organizing.

The Organized Home Schooler is well grounded in the Bible. The premise of Vicki's book is that organization is a matter of the heart. She gives practical (love that!) guidelines for becoming a more organized home schooler.

If you've checked around elsewhere on this site, then you already know that I'm a huge promoter of realistic organizing and teaching your children how to keep things organzied. Vicki's homeschooling advice IS realistic. It's practical and it's doable. She is very clear that different organizing approaches work for different family personalities. And she stresses that you need to "look into your heart to find where to start."

What's In It That Will Help You?

The Organied Home Schooler covers organizing your:

Thoughts
Time
Space
Supplies and Materials
Paperwork
Family
to name a few...

Vicki describes how to set up a home school filing system and she offers additional resources including helpful Web sites at the end of the book.

A Brief Caveat

Just one caveat about Vicki Caruana's book. She really does want you to desire to get organized "from the heart." There are many references to Scripture and she does not offer any hurry-up-and-do-this solutions.

If you are in a hurry to get a "system " in place, this book may not be for you. But if you are ready to start a journey toward a more organized and peaceful home schooling home, I highly recommend it.

Are you a homeschooling mom or dad who would like to earn income from home too?

Well listen to what this 6 year old has to say about what her mom does to be able to work from home...

Send In Your Homeschool Organization Ideas

Do you have helpful organizing ideas for home schooling families? Our visitors would love to hear from you! Please use the form below and I will publish them (using only your first name and place of residence) right here on this page!

Check Out The Home School Full Year Notebook Organizing System

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