The short answer... NO! While having a space dedicated to homeschooling is really nice, it is not necessary. We are moving into our tenth of homeschooling, and we only created a dedicated homeschool space about four years ago. So that means we homeschooled almost six years with no dedicated homeschool space. The only reasons I decided to even create a dedicated homeschool space was due to the fact that we were taking up quite a bit of our limited storage space in our home with homeschool related items and they were in multiple locations around our home. I was just annoyed by having to go all around the house to get the things we needed. So, I essentially created a homeschool storage space. 😂
I will share more about our current situation in a bit. Since this post is about NOT needing a homeschool space, lets talk about what homeschooling without a homeschool room can look like.
One thing that I would consider essential to homeschooling without a dedicated homeschool space is a homeschool cart or bin. Having a way to store all of your daily items that is portable is extremely helpful. Since you will be utilizing spaces in your home that are normally dedicated to other uses, you will need to be able to move your homeschooling supplies around easily. I did not have a cart our first year of homeschooling and constantly having to go back and forth to a cabinet to get things really disrupted our flow. Once we got our homeschool cart, we would just drag it to wherever we wanted to be for the day. Sometimes that was the kitchen table. Most of the time it was the sofa. But we could even take our cart outside if the weather was nice. As I'm writing this, I'm realizing that I kind of miss those days of smuggling up on the sofa to do school. It happens much less often now. And I think we only took school outdoors once last year. I think I will make a more dedicated effort this year!
Homeschooling without a dedicated space is very do-able and might even be nice. It makes it easier to change things up and keep school from getting stagnate or boring. So, if this is the case, then why did I create a homeschool space? For me, the more students I added to our homeschool the more spread out our storage became. I wanted everything in one spot, so I was not having to run all around the house to get things we needed. However, I did not have a room in our home that was not being used in some other way. So, I decided to put a wall of storage shelves in our dining room (which was the least used room in our home). This did two things for me. First, it put everything in one location which meant no more running around the house for me. Second, it gave me a set limit on storage. Now I need to clear out to make room for new things. This helps me keep our homeschool supplies in check. Something I defiantly needed. 😂
If you would like to learn more about how we homeschooled before having a dedicated space as well as what our homeschooling space is like now, check out this video below:
What is your favorite place to homeschool? Do you have a dedicated homeschool space? Does your homeschool space share space with another function? Or are you homeschooling nomad who moves around your home? Comment down below!
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