Organizing My Homeschool Year- Part 2

Last time I shared how I organized my lesson plans and our storage area.  Today I will share how I have organized my desk, my sons' desks, and my teacher manuals.

First up is my desk!  This is a big dumping ground in our school area.  It can become quite cluttered by the end of a busy school week.  So with much thought and planning I have come up with some cute and easy ways to keep it fairly organized.

These paper trays are used for my boys to hand in their work when its completed.
I then grade it and put it back into a folder with the rest of their competed work.
You will notice that one is green (Elijah's) and the other is blue (Noah).

I put my main writing utensils in canning jars to add some cuteness.  One jar holds pens
and scissors, the one next to that is sharpies, then the Flair Felt Tip pens, and finally the jar in front
holds my pencils.

Those two items right there help keep my desk pretty clear, but I also have a Thirty-One Gifts hanging file on my wall next to the desk.  That just helps with extra papers that I need to file away or that I have printed off but do not need right away.  In the other pocket I keep my Letter of the Week binder for Zach's preschool.

Next up are my desk drawers.  These have gone through multiple revisions over the years, but I think I finally have a system down for keeping them organized, especially with getting my most used writing utensils up on top of the desk.

Drawer 1:  Dry erase markers, post it notes, a pair of little scissors, push pins, brads, thumb tacks, extra staples, extra paper clips, post it sticky tabs and some white out.  I keep the push pins, brads and thumb tacks in old make up containers.  The drawer organizers are from the Container Store and they are the Medium Sliding Drawer Organizer.

Drawer 1:  In the second part of the plastic tray I have some big dry erase markers, highlighters, and some Vis-A Vis wet erase markers.

Drawer 2:  Rubberbands, batteries, sticky tack, staple remover, binder rings, binder clips, electrical tape, hole punches, circle punch, sticker maker, and measuring tape.

Drawer 3:  3 hole punch, extra pencils, tape, chalk, string, index cards, velcro dots, and blank cards.

Drawer 4:  Printer paper, sticky labels, and card stock.

Drawer 5:  Envelopes, extra mouse, computer programs, and some more note cards.

Here is an overview picture of my desk.

The desk is the Linnmon table top from Ikea and the drawers are the Alex Drawers.

Now lets look at my boys' desks.  Here is an overview picture of them first.  They also each have a Linnmon table top and the Alex drawers from Ikea.

Noah's desk.  We do not have an overhead light in this room so each
boy has a floor lamp by their desk.

Elijah's Desk,  this picture was taken before he had his desk
completely set up.  His desktop organizer sits on the far right side of his desk.

This is a small desk top organizer from The Container Store, along the side is what's in each drawer.
Under the plastic lid on top Elijah keeps his dry erase marker and eraser, drawer one is markers, drawer 2 are his pencils and erasers, drawer 3 are colored pencils and crayons.

Drawer 1 has his assignment folder and calendar notebook, drawer 2 is Bible, drawer 3 is Science,
drawer 4 is Math, and drawer 5 is Language Arts.

Noah has the same desk top organizer, under his plastic lid are scissors and erasers.  Drawer 1 is crayons, drawer 2 has markers, and drawer 3 holds his colored pencils.

On Noah's desk drawers I put picture and word labels to help him know what was in each drawer.
Drawer 1 has his calendar notebook, pencils and some more erasers, drawer 2 is Bible and Handwriting, drawer 3 is Math and Science, drawer 4 is Reading, and then in his last drawer he just has some extra notebooks and other things.

Since Zach does not have an actual desk, but instead work boxes, his area is a bit more challenging.  He is also a very opinionated little boy!  Last year he had a pencil box that we used to keep all of his supplies in, that worked well.  This year I was planning on using the same thing, but then I went to a Thirty-One Gifts party and ordered a cute froggy basket.  I thought that he would love using that to keep his supplies in, yeah not the case!  Then I was at Target and found a little caddy that I thought he would like better than the froggy basket, yeah he still wasn't going along with it.  His pencil box was not big enough to hold everything I wanted it to hold, which is why he needed something different.  He has finally given in to the small caddy, and we use that to house his crayons, markers, scissors, and pencils.  Right now he keeps his dry erase items in the froggy basket, and not sure what he is using the pencil box for, but its still out!

These are his workboxes, they are the Trofast shelves from Ikea.  I printed the dinosaur labels from
1+1+1=1.  We also keep our globe here for easy access.  His calendar notebook is also kept on top.

Now finally for my teachers manuals.  I keep those in our expedit shelf unit from Ikea.

Our homeschool binder is kept here.  In the blue bin on the left are teachers manuals for Noah and some extra books for Zach.  In the blue bin on the right are teachers manuals for Elijah and our all together subjects.  I got these bins from Lakeshore Learning and they are wonderful for holding bigger items, like my teachers manuals.  

 I love using magazine holders for keeping like items together on a book shelf.   In the ones below I have extra workbooks, lap books, and tot books.  These are the Flyt magazine files from Ikea, they are made of cardboard but have held up amazingly, and the price is unbeatable!

 I had some items in big bins that you couldn't see inside of.  I found that my boys were not getting into those bins because they didn't know what was in them.  My problem though was that I couldn't figure out a way to put a label on them.  I had these labels that were stickers, so I made some word labels and added pictures for the bins that just had one item in them.

This is the bottom of our Expedit.  These bins also came from Ikea, they are the Drona bins and are super big!  In the first bin I put our snap circuits, we have the regular one and also a snap circuits rover.  In the second bin are some busy bags.  The third one are puzzles, if you notice they are all in ziplock bags, I gave up on boxes!  In the last bin our the stacking pegs, we have alphabet ones and the just some shapes.  

  I hope you found this tour helpful, sorry it got so long!  I love to organize and find it makes our homeschool room feel so much more useful when things are organized.  How do you keep your homeschool items organized?