I love the house we live in, but if there is one thing that I find challenging it is the fact that I am limited how much I can move the furniture around. I really like to change things around on a regular basis and in our former home we had larger rooms that made this a bit more possible. We LOVE all the windows and natural light here, but it also limits what we can do in terms of room arrangement.

Before We Changed Our Homeschool Learning Room

You can see what the homeschool learning room looked like this fall when we started. It was feeling way too cluttered and crowded, especially after we added a computer desk in November! We bought the inexpensive computer desk ($50 on clearance at Meijer!) so David could bring down his computer and work at times while Caroline is doing things in the learning room. It keeps him involved with her homeschooling and it also frees me up to go upstairs to our home office and work.

I also wanted a place to hang up our Mystery of History timeline. It is large and there was no wall space for it so each time we used it we had to fold it up and put it away. It defeats the purpose of making a large visual learning aid if you don’t keep it out.

I also realized that 95% of what was in the large bookcase was never touched and I was basically using it for storage. There was no reason it couldn’t all go to the basement.

So earlier this week we made some small changes, but what a huge difference it makes! It feels so much more open and usable.

Here is what it looks like now.

After We Changed Up Our Homeschool Room

We moved the dry erase board up and put the small bookcase with games and puzzles underneath it. We moved the arts and crafts supply cabinet to the left and my guitar and Caroline’s guitar are in the space to its right.

We moved my desk between the windows after we moved the bookcase out of that spot.

This is the corner that was changed the most. We put the tall bookcase in the basement which opened up the room a great deal. It also gave us a space for our Mystery of History timeline which we nailed to the wall. I moved thenotebooking drawers over there as well.

Caroline keeps her notebooks on the shelf (general, GrapeVine Studies, and Mystery of History) and behind the little door are our binoculars, bird book and weather book.

It might be hard to fully appreciate the difference from the photos, but it’s just huge for us. I’m finding that I’m simplifying our homeschooling more and more. I want less and less stuff around. I also think it’s best for helping us concentrate since Caroline is easily distracted by possibilities around her and I’m distracted by messes.

So that’s a bit about our learning room at the mid-point of the year. Next up? A review of where we are in our curriculum plans for this year. Everyone has grand ideas at the beginning of the year and is eager to share all they have planned. I’m going to be honest about where we are and what we’ve accomplished. LOL!