I also love to organize, and love finding new ways to become better organized.

With 6 kids in a house full of stuff our homeschool things can get lost in the shuffle. If we don’t stay organized we can spend a lot of our time looking for misplaced textbooks, pencils, assignments, etc. We have had days where it seemed like we spent more time looking for materials than actually learning. Keeping organized is especially important when, like us, you might not have a specific homeschool room. We keep the majority of our materials in our formal dining room. We also do the bulk of our learning in that area. The kids do their school work in different areas of the house other than the dining room. They just find a place that is quiet and comfortable, it could be their bedrooms, living room, kitchen or even the back porch. If they leave their things in all the places they work, things can get lost in a hurry.

I thought I would share with you some of the ways we keep things in order and how I hold on to a little of my sanity. There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to find something you are looking for!

First of all we try to have a “place for everything so everything can have it’s place”. We try to remind the children to put their thing in their place as soon as they are finished with it. Especially if we “catch them”! We also have scheduled ( 5-10 minute) quick clean up times through the day.

For each child’s textbooks we have “cubbies”. Which is basically our fancy word for shelf. Each child has their own shelf for things that are specifically theirs. I even have one for myself.

We have hundreds of books. To keep them easily accessible, I try to shelf them in order of topic. For instance, all the reference books go on a shelf, science takes up a couple, first readers take up one. It makes it much easier for the kids to find what they are looking for that way. To train them to re-shelf the books, I gave each child a fun, decorated paint stirrer with their name written on. When they took a book out to read they would put the stick in the mark where it went. When they were done they could replace the book easily.

To keep up with history materials: I have a shelf on the bookshelf that is just for the books we use for history. For the books that we are currently reading, I have a little stack of books on the end of the dining table. That way the kids don’t have to search all over the shelf for the assigned reading.

We also keep our bibles handy in the same spot. That way they are at arms reach all throughout the day.

We check out at least 50 books a week from our local library. With the amount of books we have, library books can get mixed in quite easily. And with the amount of books we borrow, the fines could add up if we are not diligent about keeping them separate. When we go to the library, each child has a backpack for the books they choose. This backpack hangs on the back of their chair. Once we get home, we have a special box that they put the library’s books in when they are done reading them. That way, the books are either in their backpack if they haven’t been read or if they want to read them again to renew or in the box to return.

I keep fun preschool things in the nearby living room. That way my preschooler can play and learn close by without distracting the big kids learning…too much.

I would love to hear some of your tips/tricks!

Chances are that if you are raising a large family you might be feeling like there is no way you can “get it all done”, especially if your children are still very young. In the days when we had four kids five and under the age of five we had not yet learned the importance of time management. Life was somewhat chaotic and felt very hectic and rushed. I somehow managed to keep my home somewhat in order, thanks mostly to my need for some kind of control. I didn’t feel like I had much control over many things in my life, but I could have control over how clean and tidy my home was. But I was always causing us to be late, for doctors and dentist appointments that I would later have to pay a fee for missing, parties that if we actually made it on time for that we would be without a gift, and thanks to my poor organization we were always late for church, missing homeschool field trips and activities, sports and music lessons….its exhausting just to think about.  There were so many times that I would accept invitations to events that I would later forget about and miss entirely or just be too worn out to attend because I was so tired and frustrated from trying to keep it all together. I realized that I was just chronically disorganized. I finally decided that I was going to have to pull myself together or I was going to lose my sanity. I was tired of losing money for missing appointments and having to apologize for being late or without a gift, or worst of all disappointing my kids and my husband and making excuses for myself. I was tired of being that mom. It was time to sink or swim.

I tried a lot of different organizational tools for trying to keep my family in smooth running order. Some of them worked and some of them didn’t. Here are a few of the things that help me to keep our family on track. Hang on to your seats, this just may change your life.

Tip # 1.  Use the calendar program on your phone to set appointments. Set it for weekly events like sports practices and music lessons. Set alarms to remind yourself about the event. I usually set two or three of them, actually. The first alarm is set if there is something that needs to be done to prepare in advance like getting a gift or wrapping or preparing a dish to take. I usually try to get that done at least one day in advance. I set a second alarm that will give me enough advance warning time before the event to get the entire family ready to get out the door. The third alarm tells me that we need to be heading out of the door. It is always a good idea to use a mapping program ahead of time if you are not sure of where or how long it will take to get to your destination.  The program I use also has a section for notes where I put an address of the destination and a phone number, that way I can program my car’s GPS without having to search for the address and have a number to call if I get lost.  *Just a note- I am a Mac user and use the ICal program that syncs perfectly with my IPhone. Apple even has this thing called mobile me. I can make changes to my calendar on my phone or my computer and they update each other instantly and automatically without having to hook up any cables to sync or anything. Its like magic. It IS magic.

Also, always refer to your calendar before you make any commitments, even if you don’t think you have anything going on that day. You may find you have forgotten something or just see that you have a lot of things on the schedule that week and need to have family time.

Tip # 2. It is a good idea to choose the times of day you will homeschool that works for your family. Some families work better in the morning and some like to have their days free and to work in the evening. We work better and tend to stay on track when we start in the mornings. I got to a point to where even though we were getting all of our school work done, I felt like we weren’t getting all the other things we needed to get done around the house. We needed to create a more detailed schedule but I didn’t really know where to start. The one tool that has helped me to create a realistic schedule is a book called Managers of their homes: A practical guide to daily scheduling for Christian home-school families. Right away after implementing my new MOTH schedule we felt like we were getting more done. We each have goals for the day. The kids love that they can look and see what they should be doing and what time they can expect to not have something expected of them. Even if we don’t stay perfectly on time with our schedule, we still follow the schedule.

Time management is such an important lesson for us as parents to learn and for us to teach our children. Managing our time wisely makes it easy to set and reach goals giving us a sense of accomplishment and pride in our ability to keep our word. We are able to make it on time to where we need to be when we need to be there with what we need to be prepared. And we have more time to play and relax.

One of the things that I love the most about homeschooling is that I get to choose when we take a break. I wish I could do the same for housework and chores…When I am planning for the school year I usually have set times for us to take breaks from homeschooling. Usually holidays and annual trips we like to take. But I also allow for times when we just need to chill. Now is one of those times.

Our next scheduled break is not until the first week of December. We have been nonstop working since the second week of September. That is 11 weeks straight without a break even for sickness (we have been healthy since the H1N1 in early Sept.) . It doesn’t seem like it has been that long but we hit a brick wall last Monday. In fact, the whole week felt like Monday over and over and over again. By the end of the week I was begging for mercy. This week has been only sightly better signaling to me that it was time be be slackers for a bit.( shall I mention that morning sickness finally struck this morning?) Yes, homeschool and slackers are not something you often see together. But guess what!? You should! At least every now and then. The last two years have been the best for us as a homeschool family. We are finally finding what works for us and what doesn’t. We have finally pieced together a “perfect” curriculum. And we have learned that is OK to take a break. Yes, it is OK to be a slacker when you need to. Otherwise, if you try to power through the rough patches every time, you are going to find yourself frustrated and discouraged. You are going to find yourself envying every other homeschool mom who seems to “have it all together” and you are going to start beating yourself up about it. Believe me. At some point almost every year, I find myself thinking that there is no way I will do this another year. Yep, I just did say that. If you can find one homeschool mom that doesn’t say she has thought the same thing at some point she must be  lying a saint.

But let me share with you how to avoid that trap. Take a break. If you are having a few hard days in a row and the kids don’t want to cooperate, take a break. I am not telling you to do it every time. Sometimes you will just have to power through it. But sometimes you need to take a break for yourself. Maybe it is a day or two or maybe even a week. Take the time to regroup, check your curriculum choices and pray about the situation. Look for sources of encouragement. Maybe you could change things around to make the day go more smoothly. Do you need to be better organized or prepared? Maybe the curriculum you have chosen doesn’t fit your child’s learning style and they are struggling and frustrated. Maybe you could just drop something for now and pick it back up later. You know, you can do that! And sometimes you will figure out that those kids are just rebelling or being disobedient and you have to get a handle on that before you can move forward.

You set the tone for your homeschool. Let me say that again. You set the tone for your homeschool. If you are frustrated, discouraged and unhappy with the way that things are going, guess what. Your kids are going to be too. So if you want a truly productive, peaceful homeschool experience sometimes being a slacker is what it takes.

So next week, while we are still going to be doing a little school for the most part we are just going to take it easy. I have found about this little thing called lapbooking. If you haven’t heard of it yet, you should check it out. I found a little Thanksgiving lapbook template over at A Journey Through Learning. The kids are just going to work on that because it is fun and they don’t really think of it as school. (but it is) And we are going to start our Thanksgiving preparations in the kitchen. Homemade cranberry sauce, rolls…maybe even make some butter.

Our motto is : work first and than play harder.