Crayons are in the family room, construction paper in the kitchen, glue’s in the basement, and who had the scissors last? Sound familiar? Before the kiddos’ school district decided to start off the year with remote learning we legit had kids’ school supplies sprawled throughout the house, it drove me insane! I always said I’d organize it once I found the time, but you know how the saying goes… necessity is the mother of invention, or, in my case, motivation. And nothing motivates a mom quite like knowing all of her kiddos will be starting the school year off at home. So, whether your kiddos are being Home Schooled or doing Remote, Virtual, or Hybrid Schooling here are some great tips to help organize your home for learning!

1. Organize Kids School Supplies

I’m a HUGE fan of the K.I.S.S. Principle, “keep it simple, stupid” or “keep it simple, silly”. Thus, to keep it simple, just focus on the main goals….

Goals:

Everything NEEDS to be in one convenient centralized location.
There MUST be a “home” for everything & everything MUST be returned to its designated “home”.
Supply Caddies are necessary so kids can take supplies over to the table, take them outside on nice days, to the basement, etc.
NO DRAWERS! I’ve used drawers in the past to get organized and I’ve found that each slowly turns into a junk drawer. (Please note, you can totally use drawers if your family has the discipline, mine does not!)

Budget: $25

Time: 3 Hours

This will vary depending on how quickly you can hunt down and locate all your supplies, clean out an existing space, and/or create a new space for supplies.

Action:

Location

We decided on a central location for our art supplies, the old kitchen pantry, which was basically a catch-all space for everything!

Hunt Down ALL supplies

Get this, each time I couldn’t locate scissors I would purchase a new pair, wanna guess how many we ended up finding? NINE! We have nine pairs of scissors, that’s crazy! LOL! By staying organized I’m saving so much money on scissors alone!

Purchase Contains to Help Organize

I purchased 6 trays to place paper in (Dollar Tree), two caddies (Dollar Tree) to store everyday supplies, and hooks to hang ALL our scissors, keys, etc.

Purge Items

We went through all the kiddos’ school projects, schoolwork, and all the art supplies and recycled old supplies and works when possible, and threw away whatever was left.

Sanitized

We sanitized the new location of our school supplies, the new containers we purchased, and the existing art supplies.

Put Everything into Place

We divided up our paper; construction paper, college ruled paper, card-stock, etc. and placed each in a try. We placed the most used items in the two Caddies….including, crayons, markers, pencils, pens, Sharpies, highlighters, rubber bands, glue, & rulers.

Done!!

OMG! It Feels SO Good! Everything in one location brings such peace of mind.

2. Earbuds & Headphones

Learning virtually, remotely, and/or with the hybrid method means the kiddos are not only at home, but ALL the other classmates are at home too! At home with loud pets, other siblings, or in our case, both… our youngest has to be muted and can’t participate with her classroom during her older siblings’ Band class (nothing like a flute, saxophone, & dog accompaniment via barking in the background, lol!). Thus, those earbuds and headphones are vital to our ” NEW” Learning environments.

Goals:

Earbuds/headphones NEED to be in one convenient centralized location.
There MUST be a “home” for them & they MUST be returned to the designated “home” at the end of the school day.

Budget: $12

Time: 15 Minutes

Located command hooks and applied them to the perfect central location, the kitchen!

Kiddos grab their earbuds & headphones before school and return them after school. FYI-We also keep chargers here too, this way we never lose anything…and yes, we have learned from experience!

Learning Space

Every child needs their own learning space separate from the space where family normally congregates (they can’t be in the same room as the television that mom is going to be watching while nursing the baby 😉 )A space all their own. Preferably a desk, but if that’s not possible, a section of a table where they can work during the week. And I’d encourage children to still pack their book-bag with their spirals, books, etc. each day. They can then unpack their book-bags and pack them up at the end of each school day like they normally would in school.

Goals:

Preferably a place that isn’t centrally located.
A space all their own or at least all their own during school hours…thus, a dinning room table, desk in a bedroom or family space, area in a basement, etc.