The School Room of My Dreams

Since we began homeschooling over four years ago I have battled the "where do we do school blues."
 We started off doing school around the kitchen table, which was fine when I was just schooling one child, but as our family has grown and we've realized we really like homeschooling I decided there's just too much stuff to get out and put back away every day. It's always been my wish to have a proper school room, but with six kids and all their stuff the reality of it ever actually happening seemed slim.
We have a three bedroom house with a formal dining room and loft, so when we moved in I decided to make the formal dining room(which is covered in light carpet that I didn't want too ruin with kids eating on it) the office/school room. We put the playroom in the loft, and I spent my Rhea Lana earnings to create the playroom space I wanted. When we put it together we bought five child size chairs, and two shelves and a desk. I had the playroom really organized with clear boxes and lids to keep toys off the floor and give the kids choices when playing. The kids loved the space and they all have room to spread out to play.
It's always worked out great, but now it has become necessary to use the dining room for what it's made for. EATING. We've outgrown the table in the eat-in kitchen, so we needed to be able to put the leaves in the humongo table in the dining room we'd been using for school and start eating in there. When we decided to do that I decided I'd like to move the school room upstairs into the loft so that we'd have a nice big space to eat. (Yes, that means eating on carpet, but I'm hoping to pull it up this fall for concrete.) That meant we would need a functional space that would not only include the kids toys, but also be a school room AND I'd need to bring the things from the "quiet closet" upstairs as well. Where would we put all that stuff?
I had these as my inspiration. Who doesn't LOVE the container store? I mean, come on. Clean, organized, sleek, orderly...I could go on and on.

 

So began the purge of 2013. Well, one of them anyway. Manly always tells me the kids are going to be sleeping with one eye open because I always throw their stuff away and get rid of stuff while they aren't paying attention or sometimes while they are right there playing in the room. They have some things that I know not to try to get rid of(like KK's Bolt dog, Brubbs cars, and Mia's baby dolls), but overall, they know that we just don't keep a ton of stuff they don't play with on a regular basis.
I have always been anti-toys in the bedrooms. The kids each have two toys(except Mia who always ends up with 5-6 somehow) that they keep in their beds to sleep with, but that's it. Everything else has always been stored in the playroom. I am a firm believer of bedrooms are for sleeping. If bedrooms are trashed with millions of stimulating toys kids will have a terrible time trying to sleep in there! If you ask me it's worth it to put two kids in the same room so that you can use one room to store their stuff and one room for them to sleep, but that's just me and MY opinion. ANYWAY, that's another post...
SO, after purging, I had Manly install two additional shelves to my already shelved wall. This would mean that I could store twice the amount of stuff, the shelves would just be a little closer together. The shelves were a really inexpensive fix. We got both of them and the hardware to hang them for less than $40.(And, as a side note, I bought Lowes gift cards at Kroger because it was 4X gas points, so I got a BOATLOAD of Kroger points which basically earned me free gas. AWESOME) I also bought several shoebox sized boxes with colorful lids. At first I was going to go with white, but since the space is open and full of natural light, and because the space would be used for the kids, I decided to go with colors that would match the chairs that were already in there.
I used the boxes to store all kinds of things from floor puzzles to counting bears and blocks. I was able to store all the things from my school room shelves AND the quiet closet onto the shelves in the new school room with room to spare.

 

 

I used the larger toys to fill space on the shelves. They serve as décor now, but will eventually also be stored in the closets. I love the color they add to the room.

 

One of my other favorite things about this is an idea that isn't quite completed, but I figured out a way to show you anyway. 

This is all of the board games. I wasn't crazy about them being stacked on the shelf not looking a cute as everything else. I also needed to figure out a way to hang charts and posters from time to time, so I decided to put a strip of wither weather stripping or cork board on the edge of the top shelf. This will allow anything to be hung with bulldog clips and thumb tacks. The best part?! It covers the board games completely, but it's still really easy to get to them.

 

 

I was able to get all my teacher/student books into the armoire that had once stored dress-up clothes and large toys. Now the dress-up clothes are in the large locking hope chest in Isaiah's room.

 

I sat up a reading area because my kids LOVE to read. In the next few weeks we are going to raise the lights and the white board about a foot, and add in a small desk space and chair for myself. The bean bag will go on the other side of the bookshelf after that as the entire wall opposite the wall in this picture is open.

 

It does drive me bonkers that the back of the armoire is exposed, but Manly assures me no one cares. Ha! I'll likely paint it white as soon as I get a chance so it doesn't bug me so much.



I had all the toy boxes stacked in the bedrooms while I worked, still not knowing for sure what we would do with them. There were 6 boxes with toys in them, and a puppet stage(which I used for school from time to time, but it takes up quite a bit of space) that needed a new home. I also needed to find a space for all the kids large toys(like doll houses, pirate ships, and massive dump trucks.). SO, I ended up cleaning out closets as well. We had a TON of space in the tops of the kids closets that were just going to waste with sleeping bags and backpacks, so I used that space to store the toy boxes. They still can't get to them on their own, and I have them stored in a way that works: dolls and "little people" are in the girls room, and cars, trains, and balls are in the boys room. So far they haven't even asked to play with those things anyway now that the school room is so enticing, so we may be doing another purge soon...Ha!

The girls' room toys.

The boys' room toys

I thought the puppet stage looked GREAT with the décor of our boy room, so I just threw it in the corner in there.

I realized after the peek at the closets you might want to see the kids rooms, so I took a quick pic of each room.

Girl room, obviously. It's like the pinkest pink you'll ever see. Seriously. The theme is Smittle Sisters Horse Ranch.

Boy room. It always looks a little brighter blue in pictures. Right now KK sleeps on the top bunk in there so that's why there are pink blankets in there. This room theme is New Orleans jazz...for now.

I put the rest of the big toys on our cubbies. I think they look OK. Not perfect, but it works. We painted these old cubbies a few months back and it's been one of my best ideas. Each child has their own and it's where they put there Bible's, Awana stuff, and any other personal stuff that is JUST THEIRS. I have to remind them to keep them tidy, but they love having their own space...

SO, there you have it. My new school room and peeks into the kids rooms. I'm so happy with how it turned out! I can't wait for school to start now!! History, anyone???