Lilliput Station: Our School Room

Built-in Bookshelves

Our school room is at the far end of our house, so it is often becomes a dumping spot for things that are in the way. This morning when I sat down to write this, I was surrounded by piles: last year's curriculum waiting to be put in storage, this year's curriculum waiting to be shelved, hand-me-downs waiting to be sorted, a preasure canner needing to be returned to the attic, toys, and sewing projects.

For a fleeting second, I thought about doing a reality post with our school room at its worst. But the truth is, I'm (usually) pretty OCD about clutter and those pictures would not really reflect the normal condition of this room. I debated whether I should just take pictures of our couch, our kitchen counters, and our dining room table. After all, we are just as likely to be learning in those spots as in any other. But, since we actually do have a room where lessons occasionally take place and where all our books are stored, a post about our school room ought to include pictures of that room. Clearly I was going to need to do some major cleaning today.

Our printer "stand" is between the bookshelf and
my desk. We also store the wastebasket up there
so the baby doesn't dump it all over the floor.

So, I am a little late to the party, but the room is clean and we are ready to begin lessons. This room isn't fancy, but our house is small for a family of eleven and we are thankful that we are able to even have a school room. (In our last house we put bookshelves in the kitchen and did school at the kitchen table.) Our school room is an example of using what you have on hand and working with what you're given.

The bookshelves in the picture above are in one corner of our school room. I gave away all my bookshelves before we moved to this "temporary rental" (four years ago), so I am very thankful for these built-in shelves where we can store our currently in use textbooks and binders. The cupboard below is nice for keeping math games, scrapbooking supplies, and computer disks with homeschool files and pictures stored on them.

My desk and our printer are on the same wall as the bookshelves. The printer sits on an old dresser which is a great place to store office supplies. I keep extra glue and pencils and such in the top two drawers. The bottom drawer is where the kids dump the stuff that is currently being used. Having a place to store all the half-used pencils, crayons, and erasers out of sight helps me to maintain my sanity.

My desk (my husband uses it too) is where I create notebook pages, write blog posts, and grade papers. It is usually not quite this clean. Most of the time there is a stack of papers on the corner waiting to be dealt with, and a coating of little paper circles from the three-hole punch dusting the surface.

There are two desks and a table along the wall beside my desk, with the entrance to the room between us. My four younger students will use these this year. My highschoolers do most of their schooling on their own, and they prefer to do it while sitting on the couch or hiding out in their bedrooms anyway.

The wall opposite my desk holds a comfy couch. There is a closet in the corner where we store science supplies. The closet smells like dissection specimens from when my children studied biology two years ago. In front of the closet is an inversion table my husband uses when his back gives him trouble. And the wall next to the closet is line with toys to keep the little ones busy.