Posts Tagged ‘Organization’

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How to Make an Educational Display

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

educational-display

When studying a particular theme for a unit study, an educational display can spark interest in that study. It is a learning center and can be located anywhere in your house. My favorite place to put the display is on a low bookshelf. I like to include books about the topic, including picture books.

I also include other items such as games, puppets, magnifying glasses, models, puzzles, small plastic insects, or any other item that would make children want to study that subject on their own. This way your child is studying and learning whenever you are not there. This can enhance and deepen their learning.

For example, they might want to read a book that you don’t have time to read aloud to them. Or they can study star charts more closely, or reread a book already read. Or they can browse the insect identification book and find out what that weird insect was that you found on your doorstep last week. Of all the items in the display, the extra books are especially helpful. You can even make a display with only books, propping some up to generate interest.

If you want to learn more about setting up your house for learning, you will love my 2-hour video workshop Organizing for a Fun Homeschool, where I show you how I organize my  house for fun learning.

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Post-It Notes

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

post-it-notesBefore my husband left to the Czech Republic on a missions trip, he had so many things that he needed to do. Instead of having everything on one list, he wrote each to-do item on a post-it note. He stuck the post-it notes like a game show board on the back of our bedroom door. I thought that was clever. Each time he accomplished something (like mowing the grass or buying a conversion plug), he would peel off a post-it. Visually, the list got smaller and smaller as time went on. The sad part of it all is that there were so many things he had to do.

This was what the door looked like three days before he left. I looked at my husband incredulously and told him there was no way he was going to get it all done. I started peeling stuff off that I had asked him to do for me, since I now saw how overburdened he was. I realized that his life was always like this, that my husband always felt behind, and that one small chore like hanging a heavy mirror might be #87 on his list. I just felt very convicted that as a wife, I need to do as much as I can to alleviate his burden instead of add to it. I would have never known this in such a visual way had my husband not put post-it notes on the back of our bedroom door.

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Organizing the Bathroom

Friday, August 20th, 2010

organizing-the-bathroom

Bathroom items that need to be organized include cleaning supplies, brushes and combs, make-up, deodorant, toothbrushes and toothpaste, clippers, medicine, towels, bathtub toys, extra toilet paper rolls, and maybe even reading materials. How do you maximize such a small space to include these items?

Bathrooms should have a plastic carrier for cleaning supplies to put under the sink so that all your supplies are in one place. Your top drawer can have dividers for deodorant, brushes, make-up, clippers, toothpaste, etc. You can make the dividers yourself by getting checkbook boxes or other small boxes, and covering them completely with dark contact paper. The contact paper makes them easier to wipe out periodically.

Medicine can be put in a clear bin or shoe box, and once again, you can make it look nicer by covering the box with contact paper. Once a year, go through your medicine bottles and throw out anything that has expired. Then put the box in a high cupboard that cannot be reached by children. Or if you have a mirror that opens, you can keep your child-proof medicines in there, along with your mouthwash and moisturizer.

Towels are usually stored in a cupboard or in drawers. But if you have limited cupboard space, roll up your towels and display them somewhere visible, especially if the towels match the bathroom decor. Baskets can be used for this purpose.

Bathtub toys can be stored in a drawer, a plastic bin inside a cupboard, or in a net attached to the bathtub wall. For several years, we had tubes and connectors to play with in the bathtub, and we stored that in a separate drawer so that they would be easy to find. Also, instead of having so many bath toys, you could get rid of old toys whenever you acquire new ones.

You can easily add a cupboard to the wall above the toilet without using up any floor space. This cupboard would be perfect for medicines or extra toilet paper rolls. Consider doing this if you have no drawers and no cupboards at all.

In a basket on the back of the toilet, you can have some comic books or other reading material. There are other types of racks that you can put up on the wall. For example, you can have a set of twelve essential oils mounted up on the wall on a wooden shelf-like picture. (These are kind of like shadow boxes.) As you can see, organizing the bathroom isn’t so hard after all.

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Organizing Your Living Room

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

organizing-the-living-room

Living rooms aren’t very hard to organize, since most people only have couches, a coffee table, a TV on a stand, and maybe a few bookshelves or plants. So what can I possibly have to say about living rooms?

First off, you need somewhere to store videos or DVD’s. You can find drawers designed specifically for videos, and they can be out of sight. Or you can put them in regular drawers, if you have any under your television. You might even store them in a closet or in another room on a bookshelf, to keep the living room looking relaxing and luxurious. Wii games have lots of parts. You might store those in a clear bin before putting them in a cupboard. That way, they don’t tumble out of the cupboard and get stepped on every time someone plays Wii.

Baskets can be used in your living room for rolled up throw blankets for when you watch television. I have a small basket for reading materials for one of my sons who does silent reading for an hour after lunch. You could also put devotional items in a nice basket wherever you like to spend time with God. Baskets are fabulous for containing all kinds of things, like sewing, that you might want to do while watching TV.

rolled-blankets

Bookshelves are the correct storage place for books. Consider getting taller bookshelves that go all the way to the ceiling to free up more floor space. A taller bookshelf takes up only half the floor space as two shorter bookshelves. If you have too many books, either get rid of some of them, or get more bookshelves.

You can also store items on hanging shelves on the wall. In my living room, I have a beautiful assortment of medieval items that I bought at yard sales when I lived in England. I love looking at those items every day, grouped together with a few plants to add a relaxing atmosphere. No floor space has been taken up by the hanging shelves. These are also useful in children’s bedrooms. The children’s toys can decorate the rooms as they are stored on the wall. Always remember that you can find storage spaces in corners, above your head, on the wall, or underneath furniture, and your visual floor space will be freed up to make your home look more organized.

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