Lazy Genius Your Homeschool–Principle #7: Put Everything in Its Place

I’ve mentioned before that it feels like all the other pieces of life–the house, the food, the pets–have an outsized effect on homeschooling. When the house is clean and the meals are planned, then our homeschool day seems to flow just a little bit easier. It’s not all roses and chocolates of course. But the path is cleared for us. Conversely, if there are library books that need to be returned and the fridge is empty…and dirty…then it’s hard to muster the focus and will to get the homeschooling done.

So this principle is a short cut to that clear path. Put everything in its place. Sounds super straight forward, right? The catch is that everything needs to have a place before it can be put away. Treasures from nature walks, last season’s clothes, the bag of homeschooling supplies you’re passing to a friend, the library books! Where exactly do all of these things go?

It turns out that actually figuring that piece out–where the things go–is the lion’s share of the work. Or at least it was invisible enough to me that I had a hard time understanding why it was so hard to put things away.

The other piece that makes putting things away so difficult is that all the other people in the house are ever so good at taking things out and not so good at putting them away. If the house does get picked up, the work is going to be undone. The younger your kids, the quicker it will happen.

And that is as it should be.

We clean the house to set the stage. Home is where all the action takes place. We clean and organize and declutter and really think about how our space works, so that our family can do their work! And that work is going to mean things get taken out–piles made, glitter spilled, cards strewn, blocks dumped. And so, we set the stage again.

No one has been a bigger help to me than Mystie Winckler in really understanding and growing in my work as a homemaker. I’ve been a member at Simply Convivial Continuing Education for years and just keep learning! One of my favorite emails comes every Monday from Mystie with a burst of encouragement to get my week started right. You can sign up (for free!) right here.

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And you can find all the posts in this series right here.