Try FlyLady's Daily Focus Concept to Get Things in Order! #LessStressMoreFun

In doing some paper decluttering recently, I came across some papers I'd printed in 2017 from FlyLady's website. If you're not familiar with FlyLady, she's the queen of organization and decluttering! 

The papers I had printed and put into my ARC system were all about Daily Focus, which means focusing ONLY on a certain task each day. I remember my mom telling me that my Great Aunt Eva would do this, as well, assigning only certain days for doing laundry, changing sheets, baking for the week, etc. In more detail and an updated version goes something like this (and of course you can switch around the days so they work better for you and your family situation):

Monday is for the weekly home blessing hour. Set a timer for an hour and just spent maybe 10 minutes on each of the following: vacuum (middle of floor only), dust, quick mop, polish mirrors and doors, purge magazines and catalogs, change sheets, empty all trash cans.

Tuesday is for planning the week in the following ways: menu, activities, date night and family fun time, wardrobe, checking prescription refill needs. The rest of the day is for fun!

Aspirational and Sentimental Homeschool Clutter

I may not have a lot of books compared to some homeschoolers, but it feels like a lot when I'm sorting through things and feeling overwhelmed. When I realized books had overflowed off of two bookshelves into my storage room and were piled high in stacks on a filing cabinet, I knew I had to do something about that. Thankfully, it was Christmas break so I could finally tackle the project.

Let's take a specific book I've been saving as an example and make it our scapegoat. The book in question is What Your Kindergartner Needs to Know (Revised and updated): Preparing Your Child for a Lifetime of Learning (The Core Knowledge Series) and my youngest child is 11 years old and in 5th grade. This means this dialogue also applies to several more books I own in the series.

My dialogue goes something like this:

How to Conquer Homeschool Clutter

If you came here from the post Aspirational and Sentimental Homeschool Clutter, welcome! if not, please go check it out!

When I first decided to homeschool, every retired schoolteacher I had ever known graciously wanted to gift me the entirety of their saved classroom supplies, which they had each saved for just such an occasion. I was excited at first at the thought of all those books, wall maps, ABC charts and games, but then the clutter of unused and over-saved items took over and I got overwhelmed. Questions swirled in my mind: What might I need in the future? What would I need this year? What could I pass on?

Homeschool clutter can cause you to waste a lot of time searching for things you may or may not own, as well as causing you to spend money buying things you already have! Below are some ways I found to help tame the different kinds of homeschool clutter and paper monsters and find some peace, organization and money saved in my life.

Our Reading Box

What Our Box Contains

Bob Books

Explode the Code workbooks

Hooked on Phonics

Reading Pathways

Sing Spell Write

Sounds & Symbols Early Phonics Storybook from Calvert School (when we did virtual school)

Books to read aloud together

Alphabet Books

A Was Once an Apple Pie by Edward Lear

Alphabears: An ABC Book by Kathleen Hague

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin and John Archambault

I Spy: An Alphabet in Art by Lucy Micklethwait

On Market Street by Arnold Lobel

Other Resources:

Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (my family did not like this one, but many seem to enjoy it)

Highlights Magazine

Also Check Out:

The New Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease

Read-Aloud Revival by Sarah Mackenzie

Honey for a Child's Heart by Gladys Hunt

Frixion Erasable Pens and Markers

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking about those horrible Erasermate pens and how crummy they were. How they would smudge. How they erased horribly.

No, friends. This isn't your typical 1980s pen. It's 2018 and there's a new erasable pen in town that everyone loves for a reason.

These are called Frixion. My friend introduced me to them a couple of years ago and I am in love.

They use the red one for their grammar lessons, where they have to correct things. Otherwise they like the black one.

My girls like the pink one with the lid when they do their Explode the Code workbooks.

I like the blue retractable one when I'm writing out lessons for the week because I later erase them as they do them, then I write them in regular pen and highlight them. Homeschool Mom OCD: to each her own.

There are stick pen versions with lids and also a retractable one with refills you can purchase. I have only ever been able to find them on Amazon, but now it looks like WalMart, Target and Staples have clued in to the fact that these pens are HOT!

Speaking of hot, don't set a hot mug or plate on your piece of paper that you have written on using these pens or your ink will DISAPPEAR. Most of it will come back if you put it in the freezer, however. Cool science experiment for sure.

Here's how to buy the Frixion erasble pens on Amazon. I'm not recommending this particular seller or anything, and I don't get any kick-back from you buying. I'm just sending you there to see my favorite pack of retractables. But you can also buy a box of all one color, the stick pens, more colorful combinations, etc. Great Christmas gift!

Organizing Your Homeschool Areas

How about a mini tour of just the upstairs part of my homeschooling world? No, I don't have a specific homeschool room, even though we have moved to the country to a larger space. Where I might have carved out a homeschool space there is a pool/ping pong table, and that's not going anywhere anytime soon. Downstairs there is a bar area with lots of great drawers, a homeschool stash closet under the stairs, and a nook for a desk with computer and a large bookshelf. I still don't have it all figured out just yet but I'll link to it when I do :-)

So this is what I like to call my Homeschool/Work/Life Command Center. It's like home base for everything. So all homeschooling begins here. As far as homeschooling goes, it's where I keep the planner, the main binder, the homeschool helps books, the Thirty-One Container of Stuffs, writing utensils and highlighters. And the all-important thing that gets me through each day: the Cinnamon Fire Jolly Ranchers.

To the left is my Morning Basket-type thing.  That black and white thing is my Thirty-One Container of Stuffs.

And this is a small bookshelf of Stuff We Use a Lot.

I'm working on only getting things on this shelf that need to be here for the upcoming school year so I don't get distracted by other shiny homeschool curriculum choices.

So I went on Furniture.com the other day to check out some options for our entryway shoe issue and came up with this sweet solution at a good price. I kind of then went down a rabbit hole of other homeschool space solution options. I was surprised at the affordable AND stylish options that were available. Time to get rid of that hand-me-down particle board thing we've been storing the computer on.

I also found this great article on How to Set Up a Homeschool Classroom. It talks about where you are going to homeschool, how you want to set it up, and more. Now it's got me thinking that we could carve out a room down in our storage area ... the lighting is good, it's quiet, and there are plenty of shelves for all our stuff. Or I could brainstorm on how to homeschool at the bar, as was my original plan.

So many options! I'll keep you updated on my space solutions. In the meantime, let me know what your homeschool space looks like in the comments below. Feel free to link to a blog post you've written :-)