1000 square feet

So, I don't even have two weeks under my belt, but feel I should share how we are doing homeschool in our little condo. There are 4 of us in our One Thousand Square Foot place and over 9 years worth of junk. I'm an avid reader so I have several bookshelves full of books and my husband is a collector of computers so, he has several computers and tons of parts. There are very few empty spots in our house. I really hate clutter, but right now clutter is my 'normal'.

Taking on the call to homeschool also brought on this massive need to find a larger house. We've been house hunting for awhile now and have not found the place that is for us. Well, we did find a place that we thought would be ours but the Lord has other plans. So, we are waiting and looking and praying and looking and...

In the meantime though, we have to go with what we have. My 'school' room is the hearth in front of the fire place. Thankfully we live in a part of the country that does not get cold enough to warrant a fire, ever. Everything is organized in Thirty-One totes. I have organizing utility totes for everything. Right now, I'm pretty organized. The curriculum we chose is literature based so I'm always ordering books. Thankfully most of the books will be used again if we stick with this curriculum for 1st grade, so we will save a little bit of money, but will sacrifice room in the process.

We do school at our kitchen table with most of our reading done on our couch. We do a ton of things at our kitchen table, so it is never set up for any one purpose for long. I'm constantly moving things off the table to some other flat surface and then back again. I find that we take several breaks throughout our school time so I can get the table reorganized. Currently the clutter around the table does not bother my daughter too much. For that I'm very thankful, one of us distracted by clutter is enough.

The start of our day...

During our history lesson...

The end of the day...

What you do not see in any of these pictures is our little freezer we have in the corner of our dining room. It is the flat surface that collects everything that does not go to the floor.

I know that if we had a larger house with a room that had a door that closed for our 'school' room that we would not use it to do school. However, having a room to put everything, having a place to have our supplies out and easily accessible would be wonderful. In time, until then our 1000 square feet will always be evolving to meet our current needs.