My Homeschool Cabinet Makeover

I could not be happier with how this homeschool cabinet turned out! Transforming an old entertainment center into a homeschool command center!  Take a peek at my hot mess and the beautiful finished product!

I am not what you would call a type- A personality… organization… not my strong point.

Ok who am I kidding, I’m a hot mess folks.

If I want to have order and neatness in my life it is something I really have to work at. I have a pretty high mess tolerance until I don’t, then the mess drives me crazy. I’m one who will purge pretty relentlessly, get everything all beautifully organized but eventually it finds its way to chaos again.

I have however come to realize that what I need are systems that actually work for me, it takes me awhile to find them and perfect them but then I do and I’m better able to contain my hot mess.

I like cabinets, and closets… things you can close. My house is not one where you’ll open a closet and find delightful organization, my clothes are not color coordinated, if things make it into cabinets and closets and nothing falls out when they’re opened I’m a happy girl.

Then there is my homeschool cabinet. I don’t have a room dedicated to schooling so I keep everything contained in this cabinet that started it’s life as an entertainment center.

After being an entertainment center it went on to have a rod installed and became a coat cabinet for a time, and then it found new life again as my homeschool cabinet. In this cabinet I store all of our books, workbooks, pencils, crayons etc. It houses my printer and paper, note books, calculators… everything a happy homeschool family needs.

Every year before we start school for the year I take some time and clean it out and organize it so we’re all set and ready to go. Because as every homeschool mom knows your kids can smell disorganization from a mile away and everything will quickly take advantage of the situation to get out of school work.

However, this year, I knew we needed a complete overhaul… this happy cabinet had become a cabinet of horrors!!! It’s beginning of the year organization went from bad to worse to frightening by the end of the year.

If you are a highly organized person you should look away now… it’s not pretty.

 

 

Oh that’s bad isn’t it?? Piles and mess and stuff trying to fling itself out to be free of the crazy mess that it’s living in.

Want to print something? Oh well first you’ll need an excavator and dump truck.

 

Did you need something off the bottom shelf? Try not to end up covered in mod podge in glitter, chances are you’ll look like a craft store threw up on you before you get to what you need.

 

It was bad, a big, you should be ashamed of yourself, stuff falling out at you, no organization in site, big ol’ cabinet of mess!!

 

I hope these pictures make you feel better about yourself. Either you are a fellow hot mess and now know you are not alone, or you are an organized person and are feeling pretty good about yourself right now… you are welcome!!

It was time… time to get it actually organized, once and for all, a respectable, non threatening, I know what I’m doing, homeschool cabinet.

I started by emptying it.

Everything that came out was sorted into boxes. One for things I needed to get rid of, one for things that needed to be stored for when I actually needed them, one for things that would go back into the finished cabinet, and the last things that would go back if there was room.

Then I disassembled the whole cabinet. Doors off, shelves out, hinges and hardware off.

Then I started painting.

 

Everything got two coats of paint.  I decided before I started that the shelves that were inside the cabinet wouldn’t be going back in. They, along with this set of drawers have been furnishings of some sort in my life since I was about 14. They’ve had more lives than the entertainment center, these drawers were last painted when my now 18-year-old got a race car bed when he was 4.

To replace the shelves I had super hubby help me cut two new shelves that would fit the whole length of the cabinet and be much more functional!

 

The drawers got a coat of chalkboard paint, as did the inside of one of the cabinet doors.

 

Both doors got a square of cork to hold notes or calendars.  Opposite the chalkboard door the other door became storage for pencils and pens. I used locker storage baskets hanging them up with double-sided tape instead of magnets.

 

Once everything was painted it was time to put it back together, but way more organized!!

The printer has a place all to itself now, no excavation necessary. The middle shelf holds books and worksheets that we use daily and the top shelves house things I know we’ll be using soon or on regular occasions.

 

The bottom half got the newly remade drawers and places for more books. The lower right shelf is especially for library books, with a chalkboard sticker to write their due date. (Because my late fees tend to keep the library in business, but that’s another post for another day)

 

 

Once it was all done I knew we were ready to start school for the year! All set and organized! I’m proud to report that two weeks into using it it is still nice and beautifully organized and we’re committed to keeping it that way!

 

What is your biggest organizational challenge? How do you store your homeschool supplies?? Would a homeschool cabinet work for you?