School Homework Spot

About a month into the school year I realized my oldest son didn't have a regular spot to keep his homework.  We have a stack of file shelves on my desk where I keep school papers, but things get buried pretty quickly there.  If they need attention they have to go in my mail "pocket" in the kitchen, or it floats around the counter.  I realized that I was having to keep track of all his stuff all the time, and especially the long-term assignments (which are about 4 days long for a first grader!).  Enter another cause for a stressed-out mommy.  So, I took an old bulletin board, wrapped it in leftover fabric from covering old chairs (which are now long gone and taken for free by someone in the neighborhood), and hung it near the table where he does his homework.  Now he keeps his weekly spelling list and homework in the same spot, pinned to the bulletin board, and is great about keeping track of it!

Next to the bulletin board you see a fabric curtain... what's behind the curtain?  I got a crazy idea to cut a big hole in our old cabinets.  I can't reach to that far corner of the cabinet from the other side, so I figured it could be better used by some art and writing supplies from the back instead.  It's been working out pretty well so far!  I keep a stack of paper, a caddy of pencils, markers, glue, scissors (most used items) on the top shelf.  On the bottom shelf are extra pencil boxes of crayons and colored pencils, and a basket full of old magazines for cutting things out of and a stack of the kids' drawings.  There are always stacks of paper and drawers full of artwork all over our house (a post for another day).  So now it is covered up by a curtain simply velcroed to the cabinet.
If we ever repaint our cabinets (a dream I have that will probably be postponed by the cold weather) then we will cover the backs with wainscoting, thus hiding the mess we made of the cabinet.  We might also be able to use one of the doors I took off of the top cabinets to create open shelving (I can share that in another post too) and make it an official closed cabinet for our art/homework supplies.  Now that we're used to the cabinet I don't think we'd want to lose that space!  We used to have a 3-drawer cart there but it was kind of in the way and cluttered looking.

It's so refreshing to find a place for things, and to have it work well!
Happy Homeworking--
Sally