Our New Workboxes Made With 12x12 Sterilite Drawers

After having an adorable workbox system for Kindergarten and First Grade, this year I changed it up a bit. The drawers weren't quite big enough to hold all of our stuff, and I've tweaked how we use them as well. Now we use Sterilite drawers, which I can stack for multiple kids. Here they are:

This is how they looked until their recent contact paper facelift....

As much as I loved how cute our old ones were... 

the Sterilite drawers are a better fit for us right now, and here's why... 

• The drawers are bigger (12x12), so they hold our books and notebooks better. 
• When we started using heavier books they weren't fitting well in the colorful drawers and they'd sometimes make the drawers fall off the tracks. The Sterilite drawers stay in place.
• I can stack them as high as I want, customizing the number of drawers we're using instead of requiring multiple rolling carts when I want another drawer. This also requires the smallest amount of floorspace in our already full room.
• I can customize these drawers easily when I'm home schooling four kids. The majority of the drawers will be shared for family subjects (History, Geography, Science, Literature and Enrichment), with just a couple individual subjects (Language Arts & Math) and right now a drawer or two for baby (with puzzles or toys). 

There are several ways to use workboxes, but what we're currently doing is keeping everything for one subject in that subject's drawer so it's easy to grab it and go. This means I'm not loading the drawers nightly with tomorrow's work, they're just always ready. Here's a peek inside a few drawers... 

History...

Bible...

 

Math... 

Nature Study...

You get the idea. I also have drawers for Language & Writing, our timeline & history lap booking supplies, Geography, Literature, and Enrichment (picture study, music study, drawing, etc.). The drawer labeled "Mom" is where they can turn in assignments and where I keep my planner. Also near the top (and way out of the toddler's reach) is the media drawer for the iPad, iPod, CD player (for listening to library books' audio CD's) and chords and chargers... 

My Pre-Schooler has two drawers. Here is one... 

And because he likes to open the drawers, I made one for my toddler to get into.. 

That's our system in a nutshell! It's been really helpful to have our supplies organized this way because I'm not going to three different places to pull a book, grab a magnifying glass, or gather our lap booking pieces. I can say "Go get your ______" and they know right where to find it. The supplies I keep elsewhere include our Right Start Math Manipulatives, and the books we aren't currently reading for history and literature. That's it. Everything else stays in the workboxes.