What Our School Room REALLY Looks Like

It's time for week two of the Not-Back-to-School Blog Hop over at iHomeschoolNetwork.  School Room Week!

Now I could wow you all with my amazing organization and beautiful school room.  But instead, I'm going to be real.  I snapped pictures this morning at about 6:30am after the hubby had gone to work but before Bug got up.  

Although we have moments when things are totally picked up and organized, it's not the norm. Why? Well, mostly because we are too busy living and learning to worry about things like neatness and organization.  The other thing is that we don't have a dedicated school room. We live in a small two room duplex that leaves us schooling where we live the rest of our lives.  To be honest, I don't think things would change much if we had the extra space.  I might move a bookshelf into an extra room if I had it, but we'd still be doing the bulk of our learning right in the middle of the rest of our lives! 

Our main learning area is the dining area. We don't have a separate dining room, just a little extra area off our living room that we put the table and chairs.  Behind Bug's chair is a baker's rack and a microwave cart.  The microwave cart is the shelf for his school work.  I just picked this up from a friend's garage sale, so it's not organized the way I want.  I'm hoping to get a desk apprentice for the top of it! 

We've got a white board hanging over the table for doing work on (and a mess on the table).  Tucked next to the cart is a map and Bug's backpack (for taking school on-the-go) is on the back of his chair.  The baker's rack is supposed to be for my cook books and other kitchen-y things, but as is apparent by the pencil sharpener, this doesn't always happen. 

We only do about half of our work at the table.  The rest of it gets done here: 

The couch! Whether it's us cuddling on the couch while we read or I'm teaching from the couch and Bug works from his bean bag chair (using a lapboard).  We definitely like to be comfy while we do school work! 

Against the wall between the dining area and the couch is this shelf. 

This is where we keep everything that isn't on the cart.  Pretty much anything that I'm going to need to access goes here.  As well as our library books (they are supposed to be in the basket, but are still currently in the green & white bag).  As you can see, this is not all neat and organized.  A couple of times a year it gets cleared out, but since we are now almost done with one school year and still 1.5 months away from starting the next year, I haven't bothered to organize lately. 

Other areas that we 'do school' that are not pictured include Bug's bedroom (on occasion he'll pull his bean bag chair in there and do work) and my laptop, which just gets used where ever it happens to be (at the moment it's actually on my desk!). 

So that's what our 'School Room' looks like.  A really cluttery home.  It's just the way I like it! 

Join me next week for "Student Photo Week"!