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Hi, friends. I’m so excited I get to share with you guys today. My name is Courtney Messick, I am a homeschool mom of nine years, mom to three kiddos, homeschool consultant, and creator of the Home Education Roadmap. And you guys can find me over at gracegrowedify.com.
Now, one of my most popular topics is organizing your homeschool for the upcoming year, and I’m going to share some encouragement along with some super-valuable tips. Now, this topic seems to overwhelm some, and I totally get it – with kids, and all the responsibilities that mom has. Sometimes, organization just takes a back seat, but I have found – by creating simple systems that work for your family – once you implement them, the maintenance is pretty minimal. So, here are some of my personal steps, and the same steps that I use to assist my clients to get their homeschools ready, to kick off the new year, or semester, depending on how you school.
So, I’m just going to share the first few stepsof the process with you today. But, I recommend setting aside maybe an hour or two. This is going to depend on the condition of your homeschool space, the amount of items you have, and this may take a mom, say, with just one child that she is schooling, an hour, where it could take a mom with five kids two to four hours. There’s just never a magic number for anything like this. We have to take into consideration that we all have different gifts, and it may be more of a difficult challenge for some, but I encourage you to do things in small, actionable chunks. And I promise you, you’ll accomplish more this way. I never tackle the process of organizing my homeschool or organizing my homeschool space all in one day. I always do this in chunks, so it isn’t overwhelming, and you also feel like you’re accomplishing things as you’re going along. And you can do chunks in different portions of the day, you could do one a day, whatever works for your family is how you set that up.
But, let’s talk about chunk one, and that would be dedicated to stuff. So, what I like to do first is gather all the stuff: curricula, books, manipulatives, learning toys, supplies – whatever it is that I no longer need. And the idea is just to pull them all out, whatever that you plan to sell, donate, or trash, and it may make it easier for you if you already have your bins or bags ready to sort these items into. Now, this is going to be hard for you if you are one of those people who likes to keep things just in case. So, if that’s you, I encourage you to ask yourself these questions if you’re stuck on an item, such as, “Will I ever use this again?” Or, “If I save this, do I really think that child number blank will even be able to use it, by said time?” Or, “Is it time to update this item?” Or, “If I haven’t used it in one, three, or five years, do I honestly think I will ever use it?” And another good question to ask yourself is, “Would this item better serve me if I sold it for the money, and had the extra space?”
So, let’s move on to chunk two. This is where I would set aside fifteen, twenty minutes for this step, but again, I have been doing this for years, so I’m in the minimal-maintenance portion of this. So, for you, it might take a little bit longer the first time that you do it, and again, it depends on your personal situation. So, do not get discouraged if it takes you longer. But, this is where you’re going to go ahead make lists for anything that you know you’ll need to buy or replace – anything like supplies, curricula, basically anything you know you’ll need to purchase.
And then we’re going to move on to chunk three – now that would be sorting. And again, for me, it takes a little bit less, but I use a system every year, so once you get it in place, it would be very easy for you to maintain. Once you have everything pulled out that you want to sell, or donate, then you’re going to begin the process of listing your items for sale, and possibly organizing a garage sale if you had enough items. Or, find a local curricula sale or swap to participate in, but the money that you make from your used curricula and items could be recycled back into your budget for the upcoming year, so this is definitely not a step that you want to skip. And then, this part is key – make your donation drop. Do not allow the items to collect dust somewhere for months, pile up, or, I know I’ve been guilty of this one before – drive around with it in the trunk of your car, forever. Just get it done. I find the faster that I load up and drop it off, the better it feels to purge and move on to the next steps.
I’ve run out of time, and you could find those other steps over at gracegrowedify.com, but it has been a pleasure talking to you guys today. I hope this was helpful to you when you are organizing your homeschool or homeschool space for the new year, and I encourage you to remember that each family is unique, and never, ever measure your homeschool by another. This is Courtney at gracegrowedify.com, and you guys have a great day!
About Courtney
I am a homeschool momma to 3 sweet kiddos, married to my best friend,
native Texan, and pursuer of Jesus! We help new and not-so-new home school parents get home schooling right by teaching them the steps to creating highly engaged children through time management, organizational strategies, and education tailored to each child’s learning style so that the entire family can embrace the homeschool experience with ease.
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