How do you plan a move when you’re homeschooling?
We’re trying to sell our house, which means no piles of books or stinky science projects for a while. Any tips for homeschooling while your house is staged?
I am neither an expert on home staging nor on housekeeping while homeschooling, so I asked a friend in real estate for her recommendations. She says the biggest challenge most homeschool families face is returning their home to “normal.” For instance, lots of us use the dining room or formal living room as homeschool central, which can be off-putting to some buyers. If you’re so serious about selling that you’re actually staging your home, this may mean drastically changing your space to make it more neutral. Consider setting up your rooms with a traditional flow — a table and chairs in the dining room, an office or sitting area in the formal living room, etc. You probably know this, but decluttering and packing non-essentials will go a long way toward making your house buyer-ready. (As soon as you pack up a box of books, you’ll discover that the one title you really want is in the box — accept that this will happen, and just plan to hit the library when it does.)
Keeping things tidy is vital. If you have clutter-prone areas — our dining room table is our worst offender — make clearing them off a priority. If you aren’t naturally neat, keep a few big laundry bins under your table for emergency get-that-cleaned-up-now sessions — throw a nice tablecloth over the table, and no one will be the wiser. Move homeschool materials to free-standing dressers and armoires so that they don’t clutter closets — buyers will check out your closets, but they’d have to be pretty nosy to rifle through the furniture that’s not part of the house.
As for academics, the selling-your-house period is an ideal time to dive into unit studies or intensive projects like NaNoWriMo (most people do it in November, but you can write your book any time of year). Focusing on one topic at a time makes it easier to quickly shift gears if you need to—and gives you the freedom to take spontaneous field trips during house showings.