Organized Homework Station, Office & Command Center

It's back to school time in our neck of the woods and we are pretty set as far as homework and school supply organization go.  I thought I would share our homework area, "office" and command center. Basically, they are all one area in our home.  My kids do their homework at our kitchen table.  The table is right next to my "office," and most of the homework supplies are in our laundry room which is right off of the kitchen.  Sorry that some of the picture are a bit dark, as I took them later in the evening.

On top of my desk is a magazine file where I keep my receipt accordion and a few file folders with different items in them, the printer, a small desk organizer, pens and our tablets.  The white wall system is from Pottery Barn and I absolutely love it!  The calendar has all of our sports, events and appointments on it, while the board on the other wall is where I put invitations, birth announcements, photos, etc.

I keep a container of wipes here simply because I have four children under the age of 8.  I use these every single day, so it's handy to have them right near the kitchen table.  

I shop too much and I return things just as much.  Therefore, it's imperative that I save all of my receipts and keep them organized in this accordion file.  

The cabinets under the desk hold all of my office supplies.  That includes extra supplies such as tape and staples, printer supplies, computer software, small electronics, hole punchers, blank CDs, my laminator, notebooks, binders, sheet protectors, folders, printer paper, cardstock, construction paper, etc.  

Pardon the ugly magazine files.  I had other labels on them before and they ripped during removal.  

All of the kids' supplies and arts and crafts are in our laundry room.  I keep the majority of it in our 9-drawer Alex unit from Ikea.  This is where they can pull from when doing arts and crafts at home.  I have a separate container of supplies that are specifically for refilling their school pencil boxes throughout the year.  The blue container on top of the shelves is their new homework caddy.  

Crayons, markers and pencils.

All types of glue, including a hot glue gun in the pencil case.  

Paint.

Stickers.

Tattoos.

Miscellaneous arts and crafts.

The bottom three drawers are for coloring and activity books.  

 I keep all of their pencil box refills in this two-tier container.  I also have the pencil sharpener plugged in behind this shelf.  That little container in the back is for collecting Box Tops.  

This thing is well stocked.  The kids are constantly being asked to bring new supplies in throughout the year.  I refill everything as needed.  

This year I also decided to put together a homework caddy.  I plan to set it on the table during homework time.  This way they should have what they need right there and then I can just put it back in the laundry room when they're done.  I found this caddy at Target and it's perfect!  I just popped in a few mason jars to hold the pencils and markers.  

Lastly is the kids' command center.  I did a complete post about this here.  You don't see their backpacks there yet, but the kids hang them on these hooks when they get home each day.  The Thirty One wall organizer is where I keep all of their calendars, newsletters, reminders and homework.  This year I will have a 2nd grader, 1st grader and a preschooler.  They each have a pocket for their homework.  I usually take everything out of their backpacks when we get home and stick any homework in their pockets until we have homework time.  

It's in the perfect spot, as we often come in through the garage and they can hang up their backpacks right away.  

That about sums it up!  Our whole setup worked out really well last year, so I have high hopes that this year will be the same.  I feel very prepared as far as school supplies and a homework "station" go.  Best of luck to all of the kids, parents and teachers embarking on a new school year!

Weekend Touch-ups

I didn't have any plans for this past weekend, so I made big plans to clean and organize some spaces in the house that were getting a bit out of control and needed to be touched up.  Don't get me wrong, I love a good weekend plan with friends and family, but I also love when the schedule is clear and I can work on things around the house instead.  I am one of those people who can always see those messy areas in the back of my mind even when I should be focusing on other things.  Anyway, this weekend I made a list and I accomplished a lot and it felt great!  I will just take you on a quick tour of what I worked on.

The laundry room was getting a bit out of control and just needed some straightening up.  Also, that Ikea 9-drawer Alex unit needed an overhaul.  That is where I keep all of the kids' art supplies.  You can read how I originally set it up here.  I never planned for it to stay super neat and organized with four kids under the age of 8, but I need to do a better job of looking into it and straightening it up more often to keep from having to completely empty it like I did this weekend.  Some of the photos were taken with my phone, so please excuse their blurriness.

Everything came out and I wiped out the drawers.  I filled a whole garbage bag of broken crayons, old art projects, leaky glue, used coloring books, etc.

I checked all of the markers and threw out the duds.  I put the keepers into Crayola tins and pencil cases and put everything else away as well.  

I was keeping all of the kids' extra school supplies in a small white box (which you can see in my laundry room post), but when they brought their pencil cases back home at the end of the school year, everything didn't fit.  I had a plastic stacking bin lying around in the basement that works perfectly for storing the supplies.  

I have a cabinet in our laundry room that is dedicated to my candles, vases, etc.  It also needed a bit of cleanup.  I even filled a small diaper box with things to donate.  I added a few more baskets and now I don't fear things falling out when I open the door.  

Once the art supplies and candles were organized, I just swept the floor and wiped down the washing machine and dryer and the laundry room was looking much better!  

My desk was also starting to look unsightly, so I went through it and got rid of what didn't belong or things that I never use.  Seriously, what's with all of those scissors?!  These pictures are mid-organizing, but it typically does get messy like this with all sorts of stuff.  

The after picture never disappoints!

I also updated our medicine cabinet.  Got rid of anything that had expired and wiped off the shelves.  Just a few minutes later, it was much better.  You can read a full post about our medicine cabinet here.

I had frames and wall art stacked on our dining room table for weeks now with intentions of getting them up on our living room wall.  I dusted and vacuumed the living room and then hung everything up.  Can you tell that I am going for a coastal feel with this space?  Unfortunately, our hideous dark green microfiber sofas just keep sticking around and will until we can afford new ones.  Also, we have a 2, 3, 6 and 7 year old, so new sofas probably wouldn't be the best idea at the moment anyway.  But they are the farthest thing from coastal.  Bleh!  

Everything looks much better on the walls than they did on the dining room table.  Speaking of the dining room, I also updated our seasonal bucket list.  It's my favorite season to do!  You can read more about that chalkboard here and here.  

That's about all I have to show with photos.  I also touched up our master, linen and hall closets, my craft room, the game and puzzle cabinets, my makeup organizers and the pantry!  I also finished all of the laundry, though by now I am sure there is another load (or two!) ready to go!  I was a woman on a mission this weekend and would you believe I didn't even cross everything off of my list?  What can I say, my list is never ending, but what are you gonna do?!  I feel so accomplished and I woke up this morning feeling a lot better and refreshed knowing that all of those spaces were clean and organized back to where they should be.

Organized Puzzles & Games

I have quite a long list of spaces in and around my house that need to be organized or updated.  From something as big as nearly the entire garage to things as small as my glove compartment.  I tend to get to them in order of what is bothering me the most at the current moment.  Since I have been working on the storage half of our basement recently with our tool and paint organization and, practically all year, my craft corner, I felt the need to work on other things in that room as well.  When we moved into this house, the board games just landed in the basement on a bookshelf and that's where the majority of them have been ever since.  I have also been storing games and puzzles in our dining room buffet.  These particular ones are for younger players.  Since the kids play most of their games on the dining room or kitchen table (or kitchen floor, or bedroom floor, or living room floor... you get the idea), it makes sense to keep them upstairs.  Of course, pieces end up all over the place and then I just toss them in a drawer or a container whenever I come across them.  My container was getting full and therefore, it was time to take a better look at how organized, or disorganized, everything was.  

Here is the buffet in our dining room where I keep our most used games and puzzles.  This piece is from IKEA.  I didn't like the look of seeing the games through the cabinet doors, so I purchased some contact paper and covered the glass panels.  It's not my favorite contact paper print, but I purchased it on a whim through Amazon and just went with it.  A nice feature of this buffet is that the cabinets lock, so the kids can't pull out the games without us using the key.    

The left cabinet contains the games.  I was able to fit two of the memory games into small plastic containers from Michael's.  I enjoyed throwing the beat up boxes away.  

The cabinet on the right contains all of the puzzles.  Most of the puzzle boxes had seen better days, so I put them into plastic containers instead.  I simply cut out the picture of the puzzle from the box and put that into the containers as well.  The puzzles that didn't fit into my small containers, I put into zip lock bags.  I also labeled some of them with my Brother label maker.  

I am using the top two of the buffet drawers for game storage as well.  The top drawer has card games and some other random games and the second drawer has Trouble games which I took out of their boxes.  I just taped the instructions to the back of the board.  

Here is a picture of the basement bookshelf before my little overhaul.  It wasn't horrible, but it needed some work.  

I actually ended up swapping it out with a white bookshelf from the playroom that we were no longer using.  The white just went better with this particular space.  The games down here are mostly for players ages 8 and older.  As the kids get older, we will adjust what we keep upstairs.  This is a fine place for these games anyway, because this room is right off of our family/TV/bar room (don't mind the mess you see in there).  To "organize" them, I mainly just grouped them by ages (adult, 13+, 10+ and 8+) from top to bottom.  A few exceptions being some poker kits on the bottom shelf.  I keep our Checkers "blanket" game in a little basket.    

And finally our puzzles and games are looking good!  I don't think for a second that this will erase the problem of finding random pieces here and there, but I am a firm believer that when you find the right system for organizing something, it will work.  Whether I make it work because I spent a whole afternoon on it or the kids miraculously put their stuff back where it belongs from now on, it will make game and puzzle time more fun and easier to clean up and put away.  With that, one more space is checked off the list!