Personalize Homeschool Bins with Cricut to Organize for Back-to-School

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Cricut. All opinions are 100% mine on homeschool bin and homeschool room organization.

Figuring out how best to store, organize, and manage the homeschooling supplies for multiple children has been a struggle through the years, especially when we homeschooled without a designated homeschool space!

I had previously shared our homeschool room organization for small spaces, but that was in our home in Texas, which we left a year ago!

It’s past time I did a proper homeschool room tour and showed you our homeschool room organization using homeschool bins for schoolwork and how we personalized these bins with our Cricut machine here in New York!

Homeschool Room Tour

Part of the reason we decided to rent our current home was that it had a space we could use as a designated homeschool room with built-in bookcases right next to it even!

On these built-in book cases we have puzzles, board games, some school books, coloring books, and other materials (and TV stuff – but that’s because we don’t have an entertainment center/stand downstairs).

Our landlord even left us a large black 3-drawer filing cabinet we could use which has worked awesome to fit in fabric storage cubes for various school supplies and art supplies! We added cabinet locks to limit the toddler getting into them (though she’s since figured out how to open them).

We also have our piano keyboard and music books in this room, as well as a large family calendar and bulletin board. On the walls we have a world and US map and several science unit vocab words on the wall still (which probably should be taken down as we’re working on a new science unit and wall space is limited).

On top of the filing cabinet we keep our large dry erase board that we use with our spelling curriculum, and sometimes keep the pencil sharpener there on top too.

We still have folding chairs and a folding table as our main schoolroom table so we can move it around or use it otherwise for parties or dining outside. We also sometimes use our big regular dining table for school (and crafting) too.

When it comes to storing the kids’ daily/weekly school work and curriculum, we’ve been using these clear storage bins and they work pretty well and fit most of their materials and supplies (though they are a bit tight for binders).

However, when it was time to clean-up or pack up our school stuff for the day, the kids would often just chuck materials in whatever bin and it turned into a huge mess, and things went missing far too often.

So, as we enter this year’s Back-to-School season, I thought it would be super helpful to all of us if we personalized the homeschool bins unique to each of my kids so they could easily and readily identify whose bin was whose and keep track of their stuff better.

Personalized Homeschool Bins

I don’t remember where we bought these plastic storage bins, but they are 12.7 qt (12 L) Sterilite latching boxes that measure 15 1/4″ L x 11 1/2″ W x 6″ H. They fit several books, workbooks, pencil cases, textbooks, and even a binder though it’s tight for the binders. You can find slightly bigger 15 qt bins here.

You can use slightly larger ones or whatever boxes or bins you already have! I cleaned ours off first with a cloth and some hand sanitizer (it removes dry erase marker marks really easily).

I asked each child to help me create their individual homeschool bin designs in Cricut Design Space. We created four different designs, one for my new kindergartner, one for my second grader, and two for my 5th graders. I still need to design something for my own bin – Yes, I have my own homeschool bin too!

We tried to limit each design to 2-4 colors to keep things simpler and then ordered the vinyl from Cricut.com. I also ordered the Mat Variety Pack 12″ x 24″ as several of the designs were longer than 12″ (for the long side of the homeschool work bins).

Materials Needed:

• Plastic Storage Bins/Boxes with locking lids
• 12″ x 24″ Cricut cutting mat
• Cricut Explore Air 2 (or another machine)
• Cricut Design Space
• Permanent Vinyl
• Transfer Tape

Once our supplies arrived, I cut and applied the personalized homeschool bin designs to each one! Some took much longer than others (like my daughter A’s bin).

They all turned out pretty amazing in the end (even if I’m still working out how to not have bubbles in my vinyl)!

We are storing the bins in our recently cleaned out bookcase (the books that used to be on it were placed in new bookcases we recently bought and built for their playrooms upstairs).

It gives each child their own little cubby hole too for extra binders or books or pencil cases too.

So far, I think it’s working pretty well.

I think creating personalized school supplies, whether you’re schooling at home or not, can help things be better organized and cleaner!

Be sure to check out the following homeschool posts too:

• Sample Kindergarten Homeschool Schedule
• Best Chemistry Kits for Kids in 2020
• 30+ Scientific Board Games that Combine Fun with Learning
• Why We Homeschool Through the Summer
• What Questions to Ask During Back-to-School Interview with Your Child
• 10 Tips for Homeschooling Older Kids with Toddlers & Babies at Home too