Why we chose to turn the loft into the school room

When we moved into this house, the upstairs loft jumped out at me right away.

I’m of the mindset that you can homeschool anywhere, without a designated “school room”, but if you have the space for it, it definitely makes things easier!

Even with a school room, we still sometimes find ourselves learning fractions at the dining room table and going over Egyptian civilization at the kitchen island while I make lunch. However, I love having a separate space just for learning and storing our curricula.

Homeschooling is messy, and I like that the mess is segregated from the rest of the house most days.

What’s in the room & how we use it

The first thing I did when we moved in was look up the different options for desks. We have four kids, and while only three of them are actively being homeschooled (Emmett is only three so he mainly just tags along), it’s a lot of bodies in a small room at once.

I didn’t want the room to feel cramped or for our set up to be inconvenient.

I’m not new to homeschooling, so that helped me have a sense of what would and would not work for us in terms of this school space.

I decided to ditch all the Pinterest images I was saving and do my own thing – a dining room table is what we really needed in here. This would give us lots of space for everyone to sprawl out with their books, and it would be easy for me to move around and go from kid to kid.

We got this super modern table from IKEA, and as fate would have it, it was previously purchased, put together, then returned without a scratch on it by another person, so we got the last one for 50% off and didn’t have to assemble it. #winning

The chairs are a collection of what we already had (but didn’t want to use at our actual dining table) and they’re comfy to sit in so this worked out perfectly too!

We use The Good & The Beautiful curriculum, and one of their main selling points is that there aren’t 100 books per subject – their design is very minimal, which I of course love. I knew we wouldn’t need a ton of shelving and storage, but definitely some!

One shelving unit is plenty for us, and we could even do with less space here, which surprises me with four kids!

We keep our Lego in the school room for a couple of reasons. First of all, it worked out in terms of space.

Also, all four of my kids play with the Lego, so it made sense to put them in a shared space rather one of the kids’ rooms.

We store Lego separately from their other toys (which are in a toy bin in the boys’ shared room) and we also use Lego for school on a regular basis. It just made sense to store them in this room.

We use the bins to hold segregated Ziplock bags of Lego. Leland likes order, so he’s usually pretty good at keeping the Lego separated by color, but it’s not perfect and I’m not picky.

As long as they’re off the ground and out of my way, I don’t care.

Lego are so valuable for learning and so good for the kids’ constructive play, I think they’re worth the mess they make.

Besides, a little mess is good for you, and raising kids is messy! If you’re analytic about every little thing being perfectly organized, you’ll probably end up miserable and not too much fun to be around!

How we keep supplies at bay

It is so easy to become overcluttered with homeschool supplies! So many times I find myself excusing myself to keep junk because we “might need in one day”, which I normally don’t struggle with!

I have to check myself and let that ish go.

Homeschooling is awesome but also unpredictable, so it can make you feel like you need to hang on to stuff all the time, but that’s not true.

Our homeschool supplies are what we need, and nothing else. I feel like we’ve struck a really good balance with where we’re at.

Currently, our homeschool practice itself is incredibly minimal and “bare bones”.

What I mean by that is that we aren’t doing a lot of extra stuff. We are in a very full season of adoption prep, business growth, and focusing on extracurricular activies rather than extra homeschool activities (things that go beyond the main subjects).

Our supplies reflect the season we’re in.

Someday we’ll do way more art and new languages and science experiments that will cause our supply stock to grow a bit, and we’ll adjust, but for now it’s super basic.

Do you homeschool? What do you love or hate about your homeschool space? Share with me in the comments!

Want to know where we got something you see here? I gotchoo, girl. 

Our homeschool table: (similar one here) IKEA

Leather chairs: (similar one here) IKEA

Rug: (similar one here) IKEA

White book shelf: Target (similar one here)

Lego cart: Target (wheels purchased separately) (similar one here)

Lego bins: Target (similar ones here)

“MAPS” book: Amazon

Panda bear head is no longer available but here’s a cute llama: Target

Black macrame: Target (similar ones here)

Cactus art: By Bella 🙂

“Seek adventure” and other decor on that wall: Target

All frames: Target

Bean bag: Target (similar one here)

Curtains: IKEA (couldn’t find the link! Looks like they’ve discontinued them)

Pencil holder is no longer available, here’s something similar: Target

(Some of these links may be affiliate ones.)