Gettin' it Done in the Nook

One of my very favorite places in our home is my little office nook, created out of what used to be the eat-in kitchen area. It's a work-horse of organization!

You can read more about it and see more photos here. 

Today I want to point out a few areas of this little space that makes a big difference in helping us stay on track throughout the year, especially when the littles are in school.

I'll walk you through the routine starting with the laundry/pantry/mudroom. The littles enter this room through the garage as they return home from school. Backpacks are emptied and hung up and the color coded calendar is checked for afternoon activities. 

Through that door they enter the office nook. Very Important Papers (VIPs) go onto the bulletin board right away and stay there until I can get the info onto the appropriate calendar. Papers that need to be signed by a parent also go here.

Other paperwork, such as returned homework, artwork, etc., go into the basket on the bottom of the bookshelf and stay there until I can get them sorted into the correct child's memory folder.

The little baskets on the top shelf are repurposed from somewhere that I can't remember. I added leftover metal handles to them. These hold the magnets for the kids' calendar and other various items. If an announcement or reminder has come home from school, then a magnet can be picked out of the basket and added to the kids' calendar.

Next up is homework. Right now, we usually end up at the dining room table for homework time. But occasionally we wind up in the kitchen at the bar area or at a table in the basement rec room. We needed something portable to wrangle on the necessary schoolwork items. I found the right box at Target on clearance last school year, and added a small $1 spot caddy to hold all the small items within the box. Now we can grab the homework box and go wherever we want/need to go in the house. It holds essentials such as pencils, paper, crayons, scissors, glue sticks, practice money, a clock, ruler, flashcards, and much more!

I added a hook on the side of the bookshelf and keep one of my favorite bags there so I can quickly grab it and stuff it with whatever I need for where I may be going--supplies for volunteering at one of the littles' schools, my laptop and cords for writing/editing at the coffee shop, books that need to be returned to the library, etc.

On the other side of this area is the desk. The metal three bin wall hanging was a Home Goods find and was one of the very first things I bought for our house when we first moved in. Bin #1 is for our son, bin #2 is for our daughter, and bin #3 is for me and Mr. Yankee.

The bins hold labeled file folders and hold school info, report cards, health info, important receipts, community association info, etc.

And that's that! So far, everything is going according to plan and staying well organized. Fingers crossed that it stays this way! How about y'all? Do you have a system for catching all the paperwork that comes home with your kids? Where does homework time go down in your home? Do you have a favorite nook in your house?

Kids calendar: http://www.melissaanddoug.com/magnetic-calendar
Bag: http://www.thirtyonegifts.com/catalog/product/36/catid/4/swid/821a/retro-metro-bag-in-big-dot/