A Place for...Homework!!

So, I renamed my blog "A Place for Everything".  Originally, that meant this was a place for all of my thoughts.  Now, I am thinking I could tie in some organizational tips.  

We have a VERY small home and have accumulated a LOT of stuff over the past 11+ years.  As the boys get bigger, I find that my house always looks messy.  Although, it usually is, my mom and MIL always remind me that it always looks worse since the house is small and we don't always have room for everything.

One project I knew I had to complete was to find a place for doing homework.  My oldest has always struggled with school, and last semester was tough.  We would have all sorts of problems that would hinder the homework progress.  Sometimes, the computer wasn't charged, or we didn't have a place to plug it in (old house = 2 prong outlets). Sometimes we didn't have any pencils, or at least no sharpened ones.  Mostly we just didn't have a good place to do homework.  It was usually done on the floor, couch, or in bed.  I was constantly thinking about how to change it, but didn't know how...until Christmas vacation. 

I had a moment of amazing clarity and all of a sudden, I knew what I needed to do.  I posted to the local swap site that I was looking for a small desk or writing table.  My friend had a brand new desk for sale for $20. Step ONE...complete. Connor put the desk together for me and it fit perfectly in the space I was planning to use it in.  Step TWO was getting everything organized. I started with the computer, since that was the most important piece of this project.  If you look closely at the bottom of this picture, I plugged in a surge protector and secured it to the desk with zip ties. (best organizational tool ever). It's not hidden, but it's also not getting tripped over. I plugged in the phone, answering machine, computer, and our charging station.    

Step TREE was just the finishing touches.  We have a charging station that I secured to the desk with one of the "sticky things" from a command hook. After plugging in all of the phone/kindle/IPad cords I realized that I needed a way to "control" all of the cords.  I needed to go to the dollar store anyway, so I found a small basket that I could hang from the desk.  Done!

As I mentioned earlier, pencils were one of our issues.  I've always had this cute basket from Thirty-One, I just didn't really have a good place to put it...until now!  Rylan and I went to school to get some good pencils from my classroom stash (self purchased), and used my electric pencil sharpener to make sure we had a good stock of sharp pencils. Side note...I use old Crystal Light containers to sort/store pencils and pens. I'm a teacher...I never throw anything away, I just reuse them!

The only thing our little desk needed was a lamp.  I just so happened to have an old lamp in the basement that fit perfectly in this spot. Both boys have done homework here and, even if the computer gets moved...like when I blog on the couch...it always has a spot to go back to!!  A new homework station and it only cost $21!!