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So, you’ve decided you’re going to homeschool this year. Congratulations on making the first step toward a lifetime journey!

You’ve enrolled with Euka and you’ve been collecting supplies in a box in the corner of the dining room. That way it’s out of the way and no one trips over it, it then dawns on you that you can’t possibly keep them there.

After all, how will anyone access anything daily and that stack can only hold so much more anyway. You’ve been on Pinterest and are growing jealous of the gorgeous in-home classrooms some people have. From spare bedrooms to gigantic basements, some people really have it made when it comes to setting up homeschooling spaces! But that’s not you. You barely had room to help your child do homework, let alone teach children. So how can you make this work?

If you aren’t one of the ones with an extra space just begging for you to decorate it with school-related materials, you’re certainly not alone. Remember, people usually put the best of the best on Pinterest, so don’t let the fact that you don’t have such a stunning space get you down. All you really need to organise your supplies is a bookshelf (to hold books, baskets, and maybe math manipulatives) and a firm surface for your kids to work on.

Many families use the dining table for homeschooling. Some clear the dining table at the end of the school day and some don’t. If you have a bookshelf, you can use the very top to store caddies of shared school supplies and give your kids small baskets for personal supplies. Or, they can store small supplies in a pencil pouch inside a binder.

As for organising activity sheets, many families find it helpful to have a binder with dividers for all subjects, or a different binder for each subject. For several years, one family I know only had a homeschooling notebook/binder, a math spiral notebook to work out any problems, and a blank paper book for science labs/ Art etc.

With the lessons of the Euka program online, that is already a huge space saver. High school students can also use the fillable pdf activity sheets online allowing them to store them digitally and only print out what they want to. Your children will eventually have some things printed up but it’s going to be far fewer papers than if you were using a program with textbooks.

A cork board is a low-cost addition to any homeschool space and allows you to display the special work your children complete. Many subjects provide pieces to build out a display on a specific theme. These look great and inspire creativity.

If you haven’t landed a job working from home and can’t stand the thought of staggering hours Whether you have a large space to homeschool or must make do with what you have, you can have a successful homeschooling year. Don’t pre-determine your success based on how much space you have (or don’t have). Get creative with what you do have.