So this is our “launch pad” shelf – it has a cubby per kid with a bin for their hat, jacket, sunglasses, scriptures/stuff for church. Pretty much anything they need to get out the door (except their fat, puffy winter coats.)

But as you can imagine those bins started to gather a collection of random other stuff and when it was time to leave the house they would be dumping things out searching for the relevant supplies. Not fun.

That is our school shelf, with manipulative boxes and bin and sections for science, social studies, mathematics, art, etc. This also contained the kids’ language binders and math books and it was getting full to overflowing, especially now that we have FOUR school age kids.

Enter THIS!

Another shelf! 🙂 The top two cubbies are my school books (which clears up space on the other huge shelf in our living room AND random stuff I keep stacked haphazardly around the house making a big, cluttered mess. Then each child has a cubby (same spot as their launch pad cubby) which has their main binder, math book, spelling book, history binder, and any books they are reading (so those aren’t piled on end tables and getting constantly lost.) Our bedtime stories/novels are in my cubbies.

It was a splurge (though IKEA did drop the price of these shelves by $20!) and I keep saying it but truly, one of these days I’m going to run out of shelf space! But this has made us more organized and taken the strain off our already crowded shelves. We can find things faster, the room is so much less cluttered, and I feel more organized. We even have two cubbies now for library books (which were crammed under the end table before – now that space is beautifully EMPTY!) And there’s a whole cubby for the baby’s board book bin. The bottom two spots in the school shelf are toys to keep the baby and toddler entertained, when they get older we’ll put their school books there.

I LOVE IT! I can’t stop smiling when I see our beautiful new floors and lovely shelves.