Celebrating The Little Things
By Chelsey Dankert
How is it the end of August already?!
I have been loving all the back to school pictures as all our littles (and maybe not so little!) are starting new adventures as most local schools and homeschool families have started for the year.
I know that for us next week marks the beginning of all the things restarting.
If you remember back in July, I shared some plans for rounding out Quarter Three in The Home School Life, as we are preparing for our own start of the 2025-26 school year. The month of August came and went in a blink, but I am happy to say that some of the items did get accomplished! I am sharing some of the tips and routines here, but I personally believe that organizing and labeling are definitely part of the “Fun Things” in life!
Quarter Three Goals: Checked!
The Game Closet - I did get into this closet and gave it a fresh start for the school year! I’m disappointed in myself for not getting a before picture, but just trust me when I tell you it was a mess! I hung up the grey door organizer a while ago (maybe years??) and its purpose was not maintained. This time I have labeled the sections and am hoping this will help maintain their integrity with specific purposes. During the process of cleaning up, I pulled out a lot of toys, games, and puzzles that were for younger children than mine are now (sad face!). But I was happy to be a blessing to others by posting the items in our church group. After pulling everything out and building almost every puzzle, I tossed anything broken or that had missing pieces and was very honest with myself on if and when we might use the thing again. I organized the lower shelves with my younger two (almost 4 and almost 6 years old) in mind while keeping the upper shelves for more difficult games and puzzles. My hope is that we can utilize these resources individually while also fostering an expectation of togetherness.
Determine Subject Check-Ins - done! I have devised a plan and a form that highlights a core subject each week of the month. These will be completed on Fridays in place of that particular subject that week. A part of this routine will also be a monthly book review, which mimics the subject review form. I am hopeful that the repetitiveness and more simple form than last year will make this an effective part of our learning this year!
Due to some circumstances outside of our control, we decided to hold off on purchasing new books and unit study at this time. Because of our outline for September we aren’t actually starting anything new until October, so this hiccup won’t put us behind schedule.
More labels! Ok, this wasn’t on my checklist goals for Quarter Three, but who doesn’t love a good reorganization and label making? In an unintended outcome of cleaning out the game closet, our book storage got a revamp as well. I love having books readily available, but I absolutely hate the cluster and random piles. Now we have coordinating totes with labels to help identify the type of book (Fiction, nonfiction, shared school books, and library books, as well as logic puzzles and drawing books). Ideally, this will empower the kids to use these books more now that access to them isn’t buried underneath masses of other things. In my sweep of label making, I was also inspired to change the boys room up a bit. They had previously shared a dresser, which meant they each had one big drawer and one small one. Despite having it this way for over two years, it was just not working. In an off-handed comment my husband made about wanting all the toys in the basement, I decided to remove the toys from inside the very small closet and move our youngest boy's clothes into the plastic three-drawer storage. I enjoyed making labels with pictures on them to help him be able to put his own clothes away from now on. As an added bonus of our basement semi-flooding, I finally organized our pantry shelves in our laundry room and added labels - one of our oldest daughters Home Blessings will be to put groceries away. She loves a solid label system as much as I do!
Several of these items I had not intended to complete this month, but the time opened up and I knew I needed to be intentional and make these projects a priority.
A lot of these shifts and completed tasks were not groundbreaking or completed to be shared as an influencer on social media - and several of them I thought, Why haven’t I done this sooner? And I realized that it took some shifts from outside forces to push me into the spaces I have gotten too comfortable with ignoring.
It doesn’t have to be perfect, it just needs to be done.
