Home Work
I started to title this “Helpful Hints from Heloise.” Realizing that title has been taken (though it’s “Hints from Heloise” without the “Helpful,” [though Heloise’s hints are helpful]), I did an online search for my proposed title. To my delight, I found some biographical information about the real Heloises.
You might have come across one of Heloise II’s columns in a newspaper. In 2013 they were carried by 500 newspapers. I know you probably don’t get your news from a newspaper, but perhaps you have seen a newspaper sometime, maybe at your grandparents’ house. Good Housekeeping magazine also carries her column. You may not get print magazines either, but perhaps you have seen one at a doctor’s office. Heloise can teach you how to do all kinds of things around the house, things like treating stains on your children’s clothes and getting hairspray off your bathroom wall.
I call her Heloise II, because her mother was Heloise before her. Actually neither woman had Heloise on her birth certificate. Heloise II’s mother Heloise I added an “H” to Eloise in the early 1960s when she began her column “Hints from Heloise.”
The original [H]eloise was a military wife in Hawaii when she began her career as a homemaker’s helper. She and other military wives shared hints on housekeeping. Heloise I began sending her own hints to a community newsletter. When she offered to write a column for a local paper, the Honolulu Advertiser, for free for a limited time, the editor accepted.
By 1962 her columns appeared in 500 papers. Heloise I’s daughter grew up to be a hippie. She graduated from college in 1974 and in 1977 her mother died suddenly. She had no intention of taking on her mother’s career, but when her mother died she did just that and has been Heloise II ever since (By the way, I’m just making up the I and II, so that my story makes sense and you can keep the women straight. I’ve never seen either name any other way than simply Heloise).
Well, all that is just an aside, because I love to take bunny trails, as you know. I think that taking bunny trails is one of the most fun things about homeschooling, so I hope that you and your children get many opportunities to follow theirs and yours, having a great time along your way.
My real intent today was to give you a helpful hint. I have a long way to go on my own housekeeping, but I have had some success in organizing and I thought you might like to know one of my methods. I first used this method when I had the job of organizing years and years of Sunday School material and lots and lots of supplies for a large church’s teacher workroom. It worked really well and I have since used it at home, too. I have used it for homeschool supplies, sewing and craft supplies, and bathroom supplies.
Today I’m going to keep it simple and try to pare it down to a method I think might work really well for homeschool supplies. The supplies needed are simple:
- clear plastic shoe boxes with lids
- clear plastic sweater boxes with lids
- clear plastic wrapping paper box with lid
- marker
- blank index cards
- tape
- rubber bands
I use the index cards as labels. With the marker, I write a word like “crayons” on a blank index card and tape it to the inside or outside of the end of a plastic container (you could also draw or tape a picture of the item if you need a pre-schooler to know what is inside). Using the index card works great, because you can easily change the use of your container since you have not written on the container itself.
You can use the shoe boxes for little things, such as one for all kinds of markers, one for playing cards, one for flash cards, one for crayons, one for construction paper scraps, one for all kinds of glue (glue sticks, Elmer’s, etc.). You can use the sweater boxes for items that are too big for the shoe boxes, such as small games. I have even labeled that size box by subject, such as history, language arts, etc.
Four labels are taped on the outside and one on the inside.
I use my wrapping paper container very imaginatively for wrapping paper, but I think those would be a great storage container for posters that have been rolled and rubber-banded or taped.
These plastic containers stack well on shelves. I have stacked them three or four high, putting the ones with the heaviest items on the bottom. Racks made specifically for holding shoe boxes are also great for the smaller containers because you don’t have to stack them.
This is not my typical kind of encouragement, but I know how stressed you may be with the beginning of the school year near. I hope this idea can help you as you “look well to the ways” of your home and family.
She looks well to the ways of her household,
And does not eat the bread of idleness.
Proverbs 31:27, NASB