Do You Need A School Room To Homeschool? No.

You don't even need desks.

You do, however, need a place to put all the stuff. When you homeschool, you end up with a whole lot of stuff.

And quite honestly, most of my kids would be happy to leave their school stuff strewn all over the house, all the time.

And that. . . would drive me CRAZY!

So this year I got rid of Julia's desk in our family room. She NEVER worked there. . . it was just a clutter magnet.

In its place I bought this.

I'm in love. Each child has a cube for this year's school books plus a drawer for smaller items. The two big baskets up top hide craft supplies, math manipulatives, and learning games. If you reduced our homeschool to the bare basics, it could all live in this little unit.

Of course we have lots more than the bare basics.

So, a couple of years ago I bought these floor to ceiling bookshelves off Craig's List and made a little reading nook in the space where our smaller dining room table used to go. The basket on the floor is for magazines and library books. We love books. Can you tell?

We call the little number below the art cabinet. It was $35 at a garage sale. On the outside she's a bit plain, but at least she almost always looks neat.

On the inside, she is full of all kinds of creative, fun stuff. She hides all our art and drawing books, pencils, marker, crayons, rulers, and all kinds of paper. The stuff hiding in the art cabinet gets used on a daily basis around here.

On to the kitchen. We use every nook and cranny for all our homeschool stuff. Even our tiny kitchen.

Somehow, a few years back, we ended up with a big aquarium. It sits at one end of the kitchen. Instead of an aquarium stand, we opted to use a heavy duty two shelf bookcase. That's where I keep all my teacher's guides, along with a few cookbooks and extra printer paper, and of course, fish food. 

Since there's going to be a giant aquarium taking up that space one way or another, it's nice to be able to store homeschool supplies underneath.

Hmmm. . . if I'd noticed how dusty the bottom shelf was, I would've gotten one of the kids to dust before I took the photo.

I'm prideful like that

Oh well. That's how it really looks in real life. We have dust.

While I'm picky about having a place for all our homeschool stuff, I'm very flexible about where each child actually works. Some prefer the big farm table. Others like the breakfast bar. They snuggle up with good books on their beds or on the sofas. I've even seen them venture outside to do school sitting in the sunshine in the middle of the trampoline.

Homeschooling without a school room.

It works for us.