School Cart for Homeschool Organization
How is school season already upon us? Summer always seem to move at lightning speed. Thankfully, I’ve spent the past few months prepping for this time. We’re about 95% ready to begin our first full year of homeschooling. One of my main goals is to keep us as organized and efficient as possible, so today I thought I’d share the school cart I put together to keep most of our daily books and items in one spot.
A school cart is kind of like home-base. Even though we have a school room, we’ll also be schooling all around the house. This is the central area we’ll come to grab books, put them away, and know where to find things. Although I’ll share some great options of carts to purchase later in this post, I wanted to also encourage you to search around in your local thrift stores, or online marketplaces. You might be able to find a cart worth converting!
Drink Cart Turned School Cart
I’ve had this drink cart (I think that’s what it is at least?) sitting in my basement storage room for a few years now. I knew it was too cool to get rid of, but didn’t know what it would work best for. Until now. In all my homeschool Pinterest searching I kept coming across these school carts and thought hey, my basement treasure might finally have a purpose again!
This cart needed a little love in the beginning! It had been used and abused. The shiny metal handles and painted metal trays had began to rust in spots.
Since I knew I was going to paint the cart, sanding the entire thing was essential to making sure the paint would stick. I went over the whole cart once, working the rusted areas pretty well. I then took a rag and wiped away all the dust. Now it was ready to paint!
I love the Krylon brand spray paint, and went with one that was good against rust.
The first layer took an entire can of paint. (Pictured below) I ended up using three cans total on this cart, at a price of $5 per can. This cost me a grand total of $15 to change into our homeschool home-base!
Storage containers for the cart
Knowing what we were doing with this cart, I headed to Hobby Lobby for some galvanized supply containers to keep everything in order. I wanted this cart to be very easy for the kids to see what went where, so it was quick to grab and go for projects, and also easy to put things away when they were tired and done.
I had a blue steal metal basket that was handed down to me at one point, which I spray painted black. The rest of the items I picked up while shopping. You’ll want to make sure you have several bins for larger objects, or a few containers similar to magazine holders for school books. Also grab a few cary-all bins with compartments so you can separate the glues, makers, crayons, scissors, etcetera. I like to take everything out of their original packaging and put them into easy to access containers. This helps simplify cleaning up significantly.
What is it about organization that soothes my soul so much? Ugh. I love it!
We went with The Good and The Beautiful and Abeka for most of our curriculum this year. You can read all about our choices here and even watch the YouTube video if you’re super visual like me.
Let the first year of homeschooling commence!
I’m so excited to start our first official year of homeschooling! And our school cart is ready and waiting for us! Although I’ve preschooler the kids at home, and Tyrion finished out his first year of Kindergarten at home because of COVID, this is still a very new journey for us and we’re excited to bring you along! I’ll be sharing updates on how it’s going, how we structure our days, our school room and more here on the blog. Also make sure to follow along on Instagram as I share my day in stories. It’s one of my favorite platforms to connect with!
Want to add a chalkboard wall to your schoolroom or another area of your house? Check out this post where I detail exactly how we did it and the products we used!
If you can’t find a used cart, or for your sanity it’s just easier to purchase one, (and man do I also get that!) here are some fun options from Amazon!
Homeschool Cart Options:
If Hobby Lobby and shopping in person is something you consider stressful lately, here are some options for containers available from Amazon!
Online Shopping Organization Options:
Want a bit more info on homeschooling littles? Check out this post where I share the curriculum, educational games, and great online resources for preschool and Kindergarten we have utilized over the past few years!
