The Dang Junk Drawer

"It's in the dang junk drawer."  

Please tell me EVERYONE has at least one junk drawer.  You just thought about your drawer, right?  The one that doesn't always close?  The one where every random item in your house disappears and breeds to create more random messy chaos.
Here's where I may loose a few of you.... Do you ever feel like you are changing your life when you maintain an organized junk drawer?   Does a clean drawer make you feel.... complete?
Still with me?
I have two random item breeding drawers.  They started out as harmless places to hold things we needed often, but didn't have special containers for.  They quickly, and often turn into drawer sized pits of despair.  Too dramatic?  It feels that way to me.  You can easily tell how in control of my life I feel by the state of these drawers.  I have one that holds pens, tape, sticky notes, matches, random 3m things, and a lot of those kind of useful everyday items.  I have another that holds all of the measuring and serving spoons, and other fun kitchen gadgets.  You have those drawers, right?  Right?  See...

Cleaning those drawers and being able to open them and find EXACTLY what I am looking for without having to dig.... heaven.  That kind of order brings me all kinds of joy.
My life is kind of like that.  Sometimes I let so many junky things pile up, I can't seem to find myself underneath it all.  I forget the important things, and can't focus on what I need to.  I become easily distracted by one mess or another.  We all have times like that.  We feel like we are in a fog, as if life keeps happening around us, but not to us.  Sometimes we just need to dump everything out and start again.  Taking the time to empty the junk out and to keep the important things in order is important.  It is worth the time.
My first year here at Ft. Hood wasn't so awesome.  I was depressed, insecure, and hopeless.  It has taken almost a year to pull myself back together.  I had to sort through a lot of things in my life in order to put the important things in the forefront.  I had to deal with a lot of things that have been messing with me for decades.

 I am not done figuring things out yet.  

In the middle of my mid-life clean out, I figured out I had no idea who I really was.  How does one get to be um... older than 29... *cough* and not have a CLUE what their passions/hobbies/preferences are?  I'm figuring it out.  Things are falling into place.  I can finally SEE exactly what I need to see.
I cleaned out the junk drawers today.  Organizing makes me happy.  Order is important to me, because it makes my home more peaceful.  Creating a peaceful, organized, happy home is a passion of mine.  I learned that this past year.  Want to see how I feel about my life these days?

Busy. Full. Organized. Useful. Purposeful. Blessed.
Clean out your junk drawers... it just might help you figure out a bit more about yourself.

Blessings,
Mandy

Homeschool Organization (Part 2)

Here's the one that I enjoy talking about the most...

 PAPERWORK. 

I have a serious addiction to organizing paper.  I love file folders, hanging folders, labels, tabs, and binders.  It's a sickness.  Truly.

Anywho, our core curriculum this year has no workbooks, but has a million (not really, but at least several hundred per child) pages that we printed out for this year.  It is set up in six week units.  This is how I keep all THAT paperwork straight.... 

 I have one file folder for each week, for each unit, for each child!  At the beginning of each unit, I take the hanging folder and move it to my on the go school bag that my AHmazing friends from Fort Bliss gave me when we moved here.

I keep the 24 folders, our main TM, the readers, my lesson plan folder, and all of my teaching supplies in this bag.  If we were to go on vacation, I could bring everything we would need for school just by grabbing this bag.  I am pretty sure I couldn't live without it!  

I mentioned my lesson plan folder.  I'm on my second homemade lesson planner this year.  The first one was totally overwhelming, so I started to shop for a planner again.  I found one that I LOVED, but I didn't have the cash to invest at this time, so I sort of copied it.  I am still deciding whether or not my guilt about copying the idea is logical or emotional.  

I keep a lot in my planner.  It has spaces for each subject, and lines I can separate the children's assignments on.  Yes, I know it is still pretty empty.  I just printed these yesterday!  All of the planner pages come from DonnaYoung.org  That site is FANTASTIC and has a lot of options.  They also have household planning/organizing pages that I use in my huge household binder.

  

Like I said earlier, our state doesn't require we keep records, but I prefer to because I like to make sure we always go above and beyond anyone's requirements or expectations.  

So there it is.  It's not as fancy and professional as I would like.  I didn't take the time to type everything in.  It's just the reality of changing everything after a month of school!  

A MONTH... Is it just me, or is time going WAY WAY WAY too fast.

We better make each day count!

Blessings, 

Mandy

Homeschool Organization (Part 1)

Yesterday I mentioned that I was frequently asked the same 5 questions again and again.  The second most common question is "Where do you do or put your school stuff?"

I don't have great pictures.  Please forgive me.  I am working on saving up for a new lens for my camera, since mine broke last October.  :-(  I do have enough pictures to show you a basic idea though.  

When you homeschool, you have a lot of stuff.  When you homeschool 4 children, you have a LOT of stuff.  This is how we keep everything organized.

This is a peek at my "school room."  It is the second half of my kitchen.  It isn't super fancy, but we did just get AWESOME desks from Ikea to make sure everyone has functional space.  We also got huge maps because I never really learned geography as a kid and I want my children to have a firm understanding of where things and places are in their world! 

I have one book case near our desks that holds our current curriculum and daily supplies.  We are studying early American history this year, so have a lot of books about Native American culture jammed in one of the cubbies.  At any given time, anything the children need for any subject other than some science, will be either in their desks or in this book case.  I love these 9 square things.  I get them at Target, and they put up with a lot of abuse!

I have a storage room off of my laundry room that I use for holidays, excess kitchen stuff, and our books and supplies.  We call it the homeschool storage room.  I told you I love the 9 cubby things.  You'll see a few more ask I blog more!  Anywho, this light colored one holds the boys' book series.  We have all of the Magic Tree House books, which helps when I need a quick read for someone on the go.  The bottom shelves are used for my Bible study stuff.  

This is our non-fiction shelving unit.  The cubbies are organized in the same order as the ones in our actual "school room."  the boxes on top hold readers by grade level for my younger three.  I rotate the books in the reader boxes so they don't just memorize the books!

The tall bookcase holds our fiction books.  I used to keep all my books in alphabetical order, by size, and by color.  OCD much?  You can see I've let go of that control issue.  I have given away, sold, and donated several thousand books in the last 4 years, which has been almost painful.  I do like that it forces us to explore the library more often.  Libraries make me so happy. :-) I keep 3 tubs of Christmas books in our Christmas side of the room (aka most of the room), but all the other holiday books are in order at the bottom so we can bring them out by season/holiday.  The black box contains extra school supplies, and the blue box contains the second semester books and supplies for our curriculum.

I am WAY more organized with the schedule/paper stuff.  I will post on that tomorrow.  

Now that you've seen all that, I'll admit that I would be a HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY girl if I had cupboards to hide all the chaos in.  I don't like open shelves.  The colors all over make me twitch sometimes.  I don't like seeing school supplies in my home at all.  I'm trying to remember that the home isn't just mine, and that the children will read more if they can see the books.  They will take out more books if I am not being all controlling about where they go after they are borrowed.  This is a functional home.  This is their school.  Order is important, a great learning environment more so.

I'll catch you tomorrow.

Blessings,

Mandy