How to Keep the Laundry Room Presentable While in Use

We are a family of 6.  4 kids, one farmer, one housewife, a barn cat, and a few spiders I wish I could get rid of.  We are BUSY.  I like cute kids and cute kid's clothing.  I tend to overbuy the kid's cute kid clothing.  This leads to a lot of laundry.

We live in a farmhouse.  Said farmhouse has a front door.  Front door doesn't even have a door knob on the outside.  No one uses the front door.  They use the BACK door.  Back door is also the door to the laundry room.  

So, now you see my challenge:  Very busy, slightly overran, laundry room is the entry way to our home!!!

Nothing says, "welcome, come on in," like a pile of sorted laundry!  Or "so glad you came over" like a random set of undies laying on the doormat.  And, YES, I have been there done that!!

My challenge was to figure out a true laundry 'system' that could be carried out daily while still looking presentable-well as presentable as a laundry room can be.  I also wanted the system to be one the kids could do-without help-if need be.

Today I'm participating in a small 'how to' blog hop, and it took me awhile to think of something I could share!  But, I had someone ask about my laundry system lately so I thought maybe this would be good.  

Now, I won't go as far as to say this is Martha Stewart presentable, or that it doesn't have room for improvement, but this is what works for us.

Here is what my laundry room looked like the morning I took photos.  So, this is a typical first thing in the morning kinda look. 

*PLEASE excuse the plastic.  I have one more coat of paint until the laundry room cabinets are painted and so I've still got all the supplies in there!*

The baskets on the floor are clean clothes waiting to be folded.  There is also a load in the drier ready to come out and be folded.

The baskets on the side are dirty clothes.  The two pair of pants are drying-the drying rack ran out of room.

First step:  Fold all the clothes.  I know some fold throughout the day, but that just doesn't work for me.  I spend an hour or so folding once a day and then I immediately put all the folded away.  

Step two:  I take all the hanging clothes off the rack and lay them on the appropriate basket.  The clothes there in front of the basket need hangers that are up in the rooms they are going to.

Steps three and four:  Take all the clean clothes to rooms and bring back any dirty clothes.

Step five:  Sort the dirty clothes.  

The baskets are labeled.  Bottom row is for clothes to be washed on warm.

Middle row for clothes to be washed on cold.

Top is for towels.

I sort what is in the blue basket first and then the laundry I picked up from that day.  This way, if I just opened the next season's storage bin, or brought home clothes from a yard sale, there is a way to keep them moving through the laundry line :).

The end result.  You probably notice some clothing there in front of the drier.  Those are all things that are ready to be sold.  I take the things once a week and get them listed so they are always moving out the door!

Ready for the next day's laundry work!!

As I mentioned, this is part of a blog hop.  Some of my fellow blog friends and I got together and are all writing a 'how to' post.  I don't even know what everyone is posting about, so I'm excited to go read about new ideas.  I hope you will check them out, too!  Head over to Amy's Blog for the blog hop linky.  

Thank you for stopping by!

God Bless,

Lisa

Our School Room

Since we were on vacation, I almost missed my favorite blog hop week of the year, but thankfully I didn't!!

It's the Not Back to School Hop at Heart of the Matter online-School Room Week. I love school rooms, I love looking at other's learning spaces, and this year I finally have a school room of my own to share! It has it's issues, but it's ours and I love it!

I took a ton of pictures, because you can never have too many school room photos to browse :). Things to imagine-soft robin's egg blue walls in place of landlord's crazy wallpaper, and no red curtain on the window. We usually leave the window curtain free, but it was about 100 degrees out when I took these photos and we wanted to minimize the sunshine.



This is from the doorway looking in. On the left we have our lesson table. I got this table for free from our church when they were upgrading. There are 3 folding chairs-one for me, one for Mustang, and one for Charger. On the table, I keep our white board and other things that we are using at that time.

In front of the big table is our Tot School table. I found this for 19.99 on clearance at Menards after Christmas. There is a little bin in the middle that holds our picture books for the week. Our bookshelves are downstairs.



In the corner is our chalkboard/white board easel (the white board is on the other side). I found this for 10.00 at a yard sale. The art supplies are in the two white bins to the left of the easel (1.00 yard sale). Underneath the easel is a bin of play dough and a basket of instruments. They just fit there, so that's where they went!

We also have 2 desks in the room. This gives the kids an option of doing their work alone, by me, or on the floor. The desk on the left is Charger's and was free from our local Catholic School that was upgrading its desks. The one on the right is Mustang's, a 5.00 yard sale find.



To the right of the desks are our shelves. This is where I put our trays and learning tools for our 'free learning time.' There are some themed items and some things that are out most of the time (the Pink Tower for example). I try to change these out every couple weeks.



These are 15.00 Walmart shelves, and I like the way they look together! I hope to have rain gutter bookshelves above them someday!!



In the middle there is our new calendar. I finally used my Amazon gift cards from Christmas and bought this very cool Learning Resources Calendar and Weather Chart. And um, wow, it was not that much when I ordered 2 months ago! I'm really liking that I have a pocket calendar. Before, I had one from the Dollar Tree-which was cost effective, it was just time to replace it!




If you swing back around and look behind our lesson table you will see my area. On these shelves I keep the lesson books that we are using, math manipulatives, alphabet boxes (until I can get one of those cool drawer boxes made up), markers/glue/scissors, Bible Activity binders, finished work, etc, etc! There's also usually a 20 bottle of Mountain Dew :).

What you see behind that is an old built in wardrobe that needs to be organized, so no photos :). I keep all kinds of art stuff in there.

You may be wondering where we keep all the rest of the 'stuff.' Especially the things I use on our trays. I am thankful to have a storage room right next to this and I keep all that stuff in there. I wrote a post on it about a month ago, Organizing the Homeschool Stuff.

So that's our space. What does yours look like? I'd love to see it and so would tons of other people!! Come link up at the Not Back to School Hop at the Heart of the Matter Online.

Happy Learning and God Bless!

Not Back to School Blog Hop: A Day in the Life

I've been participating {mostly just reading} in the Not Back to School Blog Hop at Heart of the Matter Online. After reading a few of the 'Day in the Life' posts, I finally feel inspired to write my own.

Initially, I felt a little embarrassed that we dont wake at 6 am, follow up with an hour of prayers, an hour of exercise, feed the chickens, make breakfast from scratch, put on freshly pressed homemade coordinating clothing and sit down in our spotless classroom for our first subject by 8 am. Now I realize, that is completely impossible since there was absolutely no time left for feeding the chickens or people...but seriously our schedule looks NOTHING like the one above. And, honestly, I kinda think that's a homeschool stereotype. I dont want to live up to it, I have no intentions of living up to it, but if others want to think I live up to it, then I dont want to write an entire post saying differently-know what I mean?

But, really, my point for blogging is to encourage others. And, if you think the about is a Day in my Life, then I'd be surprised if I would encourage you.

So here's the real deal:

9ish am: Roll out of bed. Mustang is often up earlier then this, but she is allowed to watch TV till we wake up. Sometimes the hubby gets up before this. I usually get up with Charger or Mini Cooper or both-which ever gets up first.

And then:
Wake up time lol. Greet others, sit on the couch or outside on the lawn trying to fully wake up. Take shower, get dressed, get kids dressed,feed them breakfast, spend time on computer, chat with hubby etc etc.

Once everyone is dressed we usually hang out a little, let the kids play, start a load of laundry, little more computer time, etc.

Then it's clean up time. This varies on time depending on how dirty things are and how agreeable kids are being.

Then we take a break lol. If its lunch time we eat lunch.

After lunch, we have Bible time. 10 minutes on the couch or on your bed with a Bible-no matter your age. Even Mini Cooper has a few prayer books we give her {she doesnt sit still but we try}.

Then a last ditch pick up any toys that have found their way to the school room floor and start school!

School order is:

-Prayers, Pledge, Calendar time
-Circle time which consists of memory verses, songs, rhymes, & story books
-Bible Lesson
-Read aloud-the kids color while I read a chapter book
-Individual language lessons
-Group Science/Nature, Math and Art lessons

We spend about 2-3 hours total together doing school, sometimes less. We dont always get everything done, but we do what works.

after school:

Free time-play, watch TV, Computer
Outdoor time
Dinner
Free time
Bed

Bed is usually around 10:30 for the kids. Notice there are no naps??? Mini Cooper takes naps through this, but my other two have never been willing to nap. I hope that Mini Cooper doesnt change, but I figure she will. Also, my husband is a farmer. The last month or so has been his down time so he is usually here in the mornings and evenings. This has a lot to do with all our free time slots, as we spend them hanging out with Daddy. Once harvest starts, he will be gone from dawn till dusk so we will likely have school a bit earlier.

And that's our peek. If you would like to know how other families run their ship check out the blog hop at Heart of the Matter. Thanks for stopping by & God bless!

Our Country School: 2010-2011 Curriculum

Earlier this year I participated in a blog hop hosted by Our Worldwide Classroom. One week, we were to write what our style was. I answered that we were 'Internet eclectic' and I think that will shine through as I line out our 'curriculum' for the year. It is a true Hodge podge of what we already own, what I could find free on the web, what I could find cheaply at garage sales and the Dollar Tree, and what I could make myself.

I have 3 children, one 'Kindergartner,' one 'Pre-K,' and one 'Tot School.' I added the quotes around the labels because they are labels that come from a school system that needs them to assign classrooms. I dont need the labels, but they do help in finding age appropriate ideas. Sometimes, all three can enjoy and learn from the same activity and sometimes they cant. We do most subjects together, and a few individually.

Group Learning {just Mustang and Charger}

Bible:
Using "The Beginner's Bible" as our guide, we will be reading a story each week and doing various activities to supplement each story. There will also be a memory verse each week and a new song to learn.

Read Together:
*One nursery rhyme each day using first, My Nursery Rhyme Pop-Up Book {the kids love this!}, followed by Childcraft Volume 1.
*Various fun rhymes that we learned at our library story hour.
*Picture books relating to our other subjects, the season, holiday, or just a great classic.
*A chapter of a short novel each day-this has changed to about 1/2 a chapter, the attention spans are too short. They may increase in the future. Our current novel is 'A Bear Called Paddington' and next up is 'Pippi Longstocking.'

Math
*Bob Jones K5. I picked up the teacher's manual at a yard sale for 25 cents last summer. I didnt get any of the workbooks or manipulatives that would normally go with it, so we are using this as our guide for what order to teach the various math concepts. I dont really know if it's really Kindergarten level, as the first 60 lessons or so are review for Mustang. I think it will be good for Mustang to have the review and these will be new concepts for Charger.
*MacMillian Early Skills Manipulatives
*Worksheets from all over the web.

Science
*After a couple of lessons out of our Science Through Literature Exploring Series, we will be starting our nature studies usingNature Stories for Children as our guide.

Language Arts
*A few pages from a vocabulary building book each week {on Thursdays for us}. The current book is 'Cars and Trucks and Things that Go,' by Richard Scarry. Next will be 'What People Do,' also by Richard Scarry.

Practical Life
Using Shu-Chen Jenny Yen's Montessori Practical Life album as our guide, I will be presenting various Practical life activities. I plan to leave these out on our shelves as long as they are being used by the kids. When I work individually with Mustang or Charger, I allow the other one to work on activities on the shelves.

Cutting & Gluing
*Every 2 weeks or so, we will work on a new Tot Book or Tot Pack from Carisa at 1+1+1=1. Charger will be helping me glue his Tot Packs, and Mustang will be doing 90% of the work herself-cutting, gluing & arranging.

We will be dong various group Art projects. I plan to stalk, er I um mean read, the stART threads for ideas. I also have a sensory tub planned for every week or two.

In addition to the group activities, there will be a few grade specific


Kindergarten-Mustang

Phonics
*One pre-reading activity each day. Go-together games, syllable counting {My Montessori Journey} and Nomenclature Cards are some of the activities we will be doing.
*Following the language drawers explained on My Montessori Journey, we will be starting with the red drawer and moving forward at one letter per day at first, taking some days for review. This will progress at Mustang's pace. The letter sounds are review, its making the leap from sounds to words that will determine where we go.
*Using phonics objects, we will play I Spy games to work on sound recognition.
*I am using sound mats and letter recognition worksheets from Education.com.
*And we will be adding Explore the Code series in a few weeks.

Writing
*Mustang will be starting with a workbook I found at the Dollar Tree called Phonics. Its a great combo of letter writing practice and phonics. The book mixes long and short vowels, so we will be supplementing with Starfall printables for the vowels.

Art
Mustang loves art, so in addition to our crafty types of 'art,' I wanted to introduce her to some more difficult art projects. We will be using ideas from Deep Space Sparkle Art . I heard about this site from Jen at Wildflowers and Marbles and boy is it a GOLD MINE of art lessons!!

Preschool-Charger

Phonics
*One Pre-reading activity each day. Mostly Go-Together games, but also some classification cards.
*Using the order suggested on My Montessori Journey, I will be presenting one letter a week to Charger. We will be using the Phonics boxes to play I Spy, printables from various places around the web for our Sound Boxes, and a letter of the week craft.

Writing
*We will be using a few of the prewriting tracers from Confessions of a Homeschooler.

For my Tot, we will just be doing little things, no real planning at this point.

I know this seems like a lot, but we do not do everything everyday. I need direction and plans to keep me from feeling overwhelmed, because when I feel overwhelmed I give up. Having a lot of plans also allows us the freedom of working at our own pace with a goal in mind rather then throwing something together at the last minute.

I am really looking forward to this year! If the last few days are a taste of what's to come, it's going to be good! I am looking forward to sharing it here with you.



This post is linked up at The Not Back to School week at The Heart of the Matter. Come link up at join the fun!! God Bless!

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