Changes all around

Wow, a weekend of changes has me a little off-track. But I think it's all going to work fine.

After 11 YEARS of night shift, my husband was asked if he'd like to come to days. We are natural night-owls. I kid you not. As a baby I was up all night. My husband also has that tendency as do our kids. Our body clocks just tend to be different than most people we know; even when we've tried to shift them, it never lasts and we don't feel refreshed during the shifting phase. I can go to bed at 10 pm and sleep until 6 and feel downright nasty upon waking and groggy all day. But I can go to bed at 1 or 2 am, sleep until 8:30 or so, and wake up feeling energized...not one yawn all day! Not only that, but I am fully charged and can go full-speed until into the night again. Dear hubby is worse than me, because he has slept all day for so long. I am wondering how he is doing at work right now.

It may be that in an odd way God is answering my prayers about our finances. Day shifters are getting overtime and some don't want it. We could certainly use it to build our savings back up.

Around the same time hubby got called in to work days I found out that my one sure summer daycare child might have issues in coming here due to a shift in her mother's job. We don't know yet how that will play out but I can't help but wonder if either God is saying no to daycare---just be a hard-working homeschool mom OR if He is freeing up our days to welcome in some little preschoolers while dad is not here sleeping. Hmmm...too early to see the big picture, at least on this end!

I went through a rearranging mode this weekend. About once a year I completely change my school area. When I can't control everything else in my life, rearranging rooms gives me at least one area I can control! I decided I could make our school area a little better organized to benefit not only my family but any daycare kids I might end up serving.

This resulted in also changing closets and the kid's rooms, as I tend to pull items from their rooms to use or put items in their rooms that had once been in our school area. Since I can't imagine it quite right in my head, I just grab the furniture and start dragging away, moving it here and there until it clicks. It becomes an obsession until complete. I am very picky about my school area looking neat and uncluttered. It also has to meet the needs of three different kids while not looking out of place with the rest of the house. I cannot stand it if things look too busy or chaotic...it begins to distract me. Must be a little OCD coming through. We have a very small space for an actual school room, and even that space is open to all the main living areas and has very little wall space for hanging posters and things. My kitchen has a long wall that I am seriously considering painting with magnetic paint and using that wall to hang posters and charts from.

Anyway, here is the before picture from last year. We had cubbies and desks I had made for the boys...they were not used at all, except for me to stack things on all day. The boys tend to work at the kitchen table or on the couch with clipboards. All our manipulatives and games were hidden in the closet and never got used. Out of site, out of mind. The cubbies were too small to hold many of the boys' textbooks and larger items such as binders.

I took out the cubbies and added in two cheap bookshelves. I also moved my filing cabinet from the closet into the room. I was a little concerned about this as I really am not going for a home office decor as you enter my home. However, I needed the hall closet space for other items. So here is the new look....not too bad. I added some plants and a small lamp and tried to make the file cabinet look less conspicuous. It now holds our school books. Each of us has a drawer and inside we keep our daily books. My themed file folders, hundreds of them, found new residences in large plastic totes in my garage. I also took out any books we won't be using for next year and out them in totes in the garage.

This is my school cabinet. it holds the basic daily needed items like scissors and glue sticks, plus any reference books or teacher's aids for the year.


This hall closet also holds school supplies...I can't stand the way it looks. This will be my next project! The inside door is Ashleigh's "learning wall"...that's her name for it. We can open it to do her ABC's and circle time, if daycare works out.

The old cubbies worked out very nicely in Ash's room for all her small baskets of toys.


One leftover cubby made a great night stand.-Lynn