Lisa, from Homeschool Circus set us a Back to School Clean Up Challenge. I've been gradually going through various rooms in the house reorganising and cleaning all 'summer'. Well, when the weather is windy, rainy or overcast all summer and I couldn't get any serious hammock-time in for reading, I had to DO something! So, when Lisa set the challenge it fitted right in with what I'd planned to do anyway!

This challenge took a long time because I kept being interrupted by more urgent tasks, but I finally got there.

This is the dining room, which is also our main education activity area! The computer is in there too so it's also a kind of office.

I went though every single book, decided if it needed to be kept, arranged the shelves a little better, made some room for new books which I STILL HAVEN'T ORDERED YET and polished the shelving.

My desk area, believe me when I say this is really tidy. Notice the strange little gnome in the background. He's my good luck mascot.

DeEtta posted recently about an organising book which talked a lot about cat litter trays as useful storage. Well, funnily enough, when I read that book years ago I found some cat litter trays which looked rather nice and adopted that idea. These contain the kids workbooks and bits of paper which have no home anywhere else. 'It's in your tray' is a frequent retort around here.

The box in the corner is my 'to sell' pile of books which grows and grows until I can't contain the pile any more and then sell them through Preloved books.

Well Lisa, I know I forgot to post 'before' pictures, but this is really impressive, I can assure you.{g}

We're off to Devon for our annual Surfing holiday in a couple of hours and when we get back we start 'school' immediately. Grace will have her first day of college and Jack and Grace start new 'small groups' in church that evening. We have a new weekly schedule and another year nearer adulthood for them. They're nervous and excited, but we have a week of fun and sea and surf first (though probably no sun, going by this year's track record.) Debbie, I'll look out for that sand pail your daughter lost in the ocean off Maine. (Yellow, wasn't it?) See you in a week!