Start Getting Organized: 10 Tips for Homeschool Organization

Whether You Are Just Starting Your Homeschool Journey or You Are an Experienced Parent-Educator, Staying Organized is Important

When you homeschool your children, you are responsible for maintaining structure and order their day-to-day educational experience. As a result, it is important for you to stay organized. While many parent-educators and other caregivers struggle with homeschool organization, it doesn’t have to be hard—and there are steps you can take to both start organized and stay organized on an ongoing basis.

So, where do you begin?

Regardless of where you are in your home school journey, getting organized begins with finding a strategy that works for you. To stay organized, you will need to be able to keep up with your children’s educational needs and your family’s homeschool materials day after day, week after week, and semester after semester. As a result, it is important to be comfortable with your homeschool organization plan. With this in mind, this guide provides 10 tips that you can implement at home in a way that makes sense for you and your family.

Homeschool Organization Tips: Ways to Stay Organized When Homeschooling

You’re ready to get organized. That’s great—you’ve already taken the first step toward building more structure and consistency into your children’s homeschool experience. Now that you’re committed, here are 10 ways you can stay organized when homeschooling:

1. Start with a Plan

As with all aspects of homeschooling, it’s best to start with a plan. Once you commit to getting organized, you will want to sit down and create a plan that you can follow both now and in the future.

While it’s important to follow your plan, it’s also important to give yourself a reasonable amount of flexibility. If something isn’t working out how you thought it would with regard to staying organized, it’s okay (and good) to try something different. Different people stay organized in different ways; and, if something that works for someone else doesn’t work for you, that’s completely fine.

To start getting organized, we recommend creating a home school planner. This is where you will keep track of things like:

• Your overall plan for the semester and the materials you’ll need for each lesson and activity
• Planned field trips and community engagement outings
• Your weekly homeschool schedule
• The materials you have, what they’re for, and what you still need to buy (or make)
• Questions, purchases, or other “to-dos” you’ve left for a later date

These are just examples. As you build out your home school planner and start using it for staying organized, you’ll figure out what you need to include (and what you don’t).

2. Build Your Plan Around Your Chosen Curriculum

When building your plan, you should build it around your chosen curriculum. It’s great to have tons of materials at home; but, if your children don’t need them, this isn’t being organized—it’s creating clutter.

When it comes to homeschool organization, just about everything you do should be focused on your chosen curriculum in some way. This is true whether you are planning your weekly schedule or you are deciding what materials to buy (or make) next.

3. Create a Dedicated Home School Space

Another key to effective homeschool organization is creating (and maintaining a dedicated space for homeschooling. While you might do some lessons in your kitchen or your garage, and while you might spend nice days outside, it is important to have a space in your home that is just for homeschool.

Having a dedicated space will allow you to keep all of your homeschool materials together, and it will help avoid having them spread throughout your home. It will also make it easier to keep them organized. If the only space you have available is a closet (or a shelf in a closet), then empty this space out and use it as efficiently as possible. If you have a room that you can dedicate to your children’s homeschooling, it can be helpful to start with a clean slate here as well; and, from there, you can make conscious decisions about furniture, décor, and what goes where.

4. Don’t Buy Too Much Too Soon

From buying homeschool materials to buying shelving units and bins, it is important not to buy too much too soon. Once you’re organized, you might not need as much as you think—and there is no reason to spend money on a set of shelves when that money could be better spent elsewhere.

Once you have a plan, you should be able to figure out what you’ll need (more or less) over the coming semester. Then, you can look at what you currently have at home and make informed decisions about what you really need. Remember, the less stuff you have, the less stuff you’ll need to keep organized.

5. Make Sure to Buy (or Make) What You Need On Time

While you shouldn’t buy too much too soon, you also don’t want to end up unprepared for any of your children’s lessons or activities. With this in mind, another key aspect of homeschool organization is making sure you buy (or make) what you need on time.

This is one area where regularly working with your home school planner comes into play. If you review and update your planner on a daily (or near-daily) basis, you will have a clear picture of what’s coming up in the days and weeks ahead—and then you can use this to make sure you are prepared.

6. Retire (or Repurpose) Materials No Longer in Use

Once you have things in your home, it can be tempting to keep them in perpetuity. While this makes sense with keepsakes and other things that really matter to you, it doesn’t make sense with homeschool materials that you bought (or made) for a specific purpose at a specific point in time.

To help yourself stay organized, you should retire (or repurpose) materials that are no longer in use. If you can repurpose materials for a future lesson or keep them for use with a younger child, then by all means do so. But, you don’t need to keep them out right now. If a material has fully served its purpose, then recycle it or see if you can pass it on to someone else.

7. Stick to Your Daily Schedule (Except When You Have Other Plans)

Staying organized is about more than just physical organization within your home. It is also about having structure and consistency in your home school days. Structure and consistency are important for students of all ages. If they have a general idea of what to expect, they will be better able to focus on the task at hand.

With this in mind, you should stick to your daily schedule when homeschooling. You should also make sure that you start on time every day. Not knowing what to do and running out of time are symptoms of disorganization that can, and generally should, be avoided. It’s perfectly acceptable to deviate from your regular schedule when you plan field trips or other outings; but otherwise, your schedule should become a matter of routine.  

8. Set Aside Time for Administrative Tasks  

You will spend a significant amount of your time with your children during your homeschool days; and, when you are in your role as a parent-educator or caregiver-educator, it is important to make your children’s educational needs your priority. But, when you homeschool, staying organized also necessarily involves having time to yourself.

This means that you should set aside time for administrative tasks. As your children get older, you can do this while your children are reading or working independently. But, earlier in your children’s development, you may need to dedicate a half-hour or so a few evenings a week to reflecting, taking stock, and planning ahead. This is a key part of your role as a parent-educator, too, and neglecting this part of your role can quickly lead to getting disorganized and feeling out of control.

9. Don’t Let Yourself Get Overwhelmed

When you’re trying to stay on top of everything (both homeschool-related and otherwise), it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. If you start to feel overwhelmed, that’s okay. It’s important to acknowledge that this is the case and use coping mechanisms to help yourself reset.

Here too, you should focus on finding what works for you. If it helps to take care of some chores so that you don’t have to think about them anymore, that’s great. If you just need some quiet time, that’s fine too. Ultimately, doing whatever it is you need to do to feel like yourself will be what is best for you and your children.

10. Think About What Has Worked (and What Hasn’t)

Managing homeschool organization isn’t a one-time event. You will need to make an effort to stay organized, and you will need to adapt to how your children’s homeschool experience evolves over time.

As you move through each home school year, you should think about what has worked (and what hasn’t) when it comes to staying organized. Use these lessons to make informed decisions for the future. As we said above, by custom-tailoring your organizational efforts to your specific needs, you will make staying organized as easy as possible—and this will maximize your ability to stay organized long-term.

Spotlight: Keeping Homeschool Materials Organized Day-to-Day

We’ve covered a lot. As you work on your homeschool organization, we encourage you to keep these 10 tips in mind and think critically about how you can best use them based on your personal preferences, desires, and needs.

One thing we covered above was organizing homeschool materials. Here are five additional tips focused specifically on homeschool material organization:

• Organize Your Homeschool Materials By Subject, Activity, and Grade – Organizing homeschool materials is about more than just making them look good on the shelf. If materials go together, put them together. If you organize your materials by subject, activity, and grade (in that order), this will help you and your children find what you need when you need it.
• Have a Place for Everything – Within your dedicated home school space, make sure you have a place for everything. If materials just get thrown on a shelf at the end of the day, they will quickly become disorganized and forgotten.
• Don’t Have Too Many Materials Out At Once – This applies in general and on a day-to-day basis. Give your children access to what they need based on where they are in your chosen curriculum—nothing more and nothing less.
• Have Your Children Put Things Back When They’re No Longer Needed – Teach your children to put things back when they’re no longer needed. By having a routine of getting materials out, using them, and then putting them away again, your children will feel empowered during the school day—and this will help your family stay organized as well.
• Clean Up at the End of Each School Day – Even if your children put things away during the day, there may still be some cleanup to do when the school day ends. Don’t let this carry over from one day to the next. Instead, have your children work with you (or work independently) to finish the day how it started.

Again, these are intended as suggestions that you can custom-tailor to your personal homeschool environment. Find what works for you, stick with it until it doesn’t work, and then use your experience to think about what you can do differently.

FAQs: Getting Organized (and Staying Organized) in Homeschool

How do I stay organized when homeschooling?

Staying organized when homeschooling requires you to prioritize having a plan and sticking to it. This applies to all aspects of your role as a parent-educator, from organizing your materials and homeschool space to organizing your daily and weekly schedules. By taking the time to plan—and by sticking to your plan once you have it—you will give yourself the insight and structure you need to manage your family’s homeschool experience with confidence.

What do I need to buy to start homeschooling?

Deciding what to buy when you start homeschooling can be tricky. Just like buying groceries or buying furniture for your home, you have a lot of options, some of which are more necessary than others. Ultimately, you should focus on buying what you and your children will need for the upcoming semester. When prioritizing, put your children’s curriculum and necessary materials first, then focus on optional materials and experiences, and put things like shelves and bins last. While these can be great organizational tools if you have the budget and space, you can also find a way to stay organized without them if necessary.

What should I do with everything my child makes in homeschool?

This is a common, and challenging question. As a parent or caregiver, you will instinctually want to keep as much as possible. But, this can become overwhelming; and, over time, it can become impractical. When keeping your children’s creations, focus on what matters most to them and what matters most to you. Will you wish you had something five years from now? Or, will you forget it ever existed in a week? Taking photos (and creating a photo book) can be a great option as well.

How do I keep track of my child’s progress in homeschool?

Keeping track of your child’s progress in homeschool involves keeping a daily log and then preparing some sort of final report or binder at the end of the year. You should find out what your state requires and then go from there. With that said, state requirements are often fairly minimal, and you may want to do more. Here, it’s better to err on the side of more documentation than less, and you can use an app like Goodnotes or Notability to keep records (and stay organized) without generating additional paper.

How can I manage everything I need to when homeschooling?

Managing everything you need to when homeschooling can be hard. But, it is not impossible—far from it. By developing a plan and finding a way to organize all of your materials in a way that works for you and your children, you can build structure into your family’s homeschool experience that facilitates staying on schedule and staying organized day-to-day. This, in turn, will give you more time to take care of non-school-related obligations; and, if you need to, you can find ways to minimize the time these obligations require (i.e., stocking the fridge with some frozen means) or set aside a few hours to knock some things off of your to-do list. Our home school subscription can help.

Need More Advice on Managing Homeschool? Become a Crush Home School Member

If you would like more homeschool organization tips and information on managing homeschool generally, consider becoming a Crush Home School member. Members receive a monthly package via email that includes advice, insights, suggested lessons and activities, exclusive resources, and much more. Learn more about the Crush Home School membership.