Carnival of Homeschooling: The Story of a School Room

This week's Carnival of Homeschooling host, Sprittibee, asked, "What does your homeschool, schooling room look like?"

A few months ago she'd probably have been sorry that she asked me that. :o)

Here's our story...
There once was a school room that was...okay.

There was some furniture that was too big for the room and it's purpose.

Not enough storage or shelving. We are Sonlighters, after all.

Not to mention the the Wee Babe hated it!!! She'd enter the room and start tearing stuff apart. Plus we moved a living room shelf into the room around Christmas (to make room for the tree) and never took it out. Not to mention, we ordered nexts years curriculum in January and had no place to store it. So it wound up in the middle of the room that the babe had trashed.

The result...(Beware it isn't pretty. Not for the faint of heart.)

While looking at the pit, my hubby and I made a tough decision to postpone a much anticipated trip to NYC this summer. This has been something we promised our eldest on her 7th birthday. She's 9 now. We decided it wasn't the best use of our $$$ when there were things around the house that wanted to improve. So we broke the news.

We eased the tears with a trip to Build-A-Bear, and signed her up for the drama and church camp she's been wanting to go to. Oh and a weekend at Great Wolf Lodge. Bribery at it's finest.

We replaced the trip to NYC with a trip to IKEA. Oooh, it's not down the road, so we emptied out the van and buckled in. And being the mean parents that we are, we brought some school along with us. Yes, that's right, we canceled her trip and made her do school on the way to a boring store. =o)

Here's the proof.

We wandered around IKEA with our map and our pencils and furiously scribbled down everything that we we planning on getting. And a few things that called out to us while there.

Whoaaa! Look at that cart? Maybe we weren't so wise with the $$$? Of course we were, it's IKEA. Cheap, cheap,cheap. We actualy came out $200 under our limit. Yay wallet!!!

Then we spent the about 3 hours total assembling 11 pieces of furniture. Easiest assembly of our lives. IKEA is our new favorite place. Those shelves from Target or Walmart take about 30 minutes a piece. And that's for a small, 3-shelf, bookcase. We built a 6 shelf bookcase from IKEA in 10 minutes.

Then came the sorting, purging, and organizing. Ack!!! Long, not fun work. But we called the "Big Guns" to help with the purging.






Yes, it would have been cheaper to rent a truck or dumpster and haul it out ourselves but we decided our sanity was more important. (I'm a tad on the weakling side. LOL) Plus, we removed a bunch of shrubs that we hated, and cleared out the garage while they were at it. They took it all. And they recycle and donate everything that they can. Which saved us several trips to several different places. Worth every penny. If you have it.

And the moment you've all been waiting for.