Small Home Montessori: Impressionistic Charts Storage - UPDATE

The original post on the Impressionistic Chart Storage in our home.

Background: 
I have had this over-the-toilet unit since Legoboy was a baby:
Sample at Amazon (not an affiliate link) - I bought ours locally

haha! yeah right we have that much space around our toilet! 

At the time, I did not want to put baby locks on everything - I had a swing gate at the kitchen door and a variety of outlet covers (mostly ones that could allow things to be plugged in but still locked - child couldn't pull the cord from the wall either).

For daycare licensing purposes I did need a safety handle on the pantry door (because I had to keep the cleaning chemicals below the food - despite that most of the cleaning chemicals WERE food such as baking soda, vinegar and cornstarch... I digress).

When it comes to safety equipment, that is all we had. Our lower drawers/cupboards contained only child-safe items; lower cupboards in the bathroom held cloth diapers, mom's cloth items, towels and washcloths, cup of extra tooth brushes, and toilet paper. All else was stored in the cabinet or on the shelf shown above. It was high enough for daycare licensing, but I still kept "attractive and somewhat dangerous" in baskets on the shelves to minimize attention.


Times have changed. I now have few consistent young visitors to our home - and for them I can close the bathroom door, keep them in arms, or mom is with them.

And I needed the shelf somewhere else:

This shelf fit perfectly (I had to disassemble portions of it to get it to fit under the upper shelf in the closet, but once in, it fits perfectly) and is currently the only place I can safely store the long division with racks and tubes. The charts fit perfectly underneath it - almost like they were made for each other! The bonus is I can now use that space between the charts and the upper shelf much more efficiently. While I am still trying to be cautious what I bring home permanently (from our rented co-op) - to only bring home what we'll use - now I have found a bit more space I didn't know I had!

One bummer: our blue lamp we use for the sun still doesn't fit. I'll get it figured out.

In the bathroom, I was able to place a very low shelf in the corner that held all the things I thought I still needed this tall shelf for (and it has empty space! AND my bathroom looks so much more spacious now!!!). We're obviously far from cloth-diapering at this point and we've gone even more food-based and all-natural with our cleaners, etc. that we just don't have as much as "stuff" in the kitchen and bathroom anymore. Plus in this apartment we do have a small bathroom closet to hold towels and washcloths and art supplies.

I remember having every nook and cranny crammed in with nothing but STUFF. I wish I'd known then what I know now! But it's a journey, that's for sure! And we're not entirely where we want to be just yet.


Hm. Perhaps a photo of our bathroom is in order. Only because this bathroom is actually larger than most and it is the primary place to do artwork. Sounds strange? I'll get photos ;)

Small Home Montessori: Impressionistic Charts

I am asked from time to time how we store our charts. This has changed over the years - and the caveat is that I have the FULL-SIZE mat-board charts from AMI elementary training. These are intended for a full classroom and I would not have purchased from specifically for homeschooling; however, for what I purchased, they were much less expensive than any of the options available for purchase anywhere else (even now), they were a complete set that coordinated with the albums I was creating in training - and, well, they were required for training.

Thus I use what I have, though it is not ideal for a homeschool setting.


For a while, I had a Montessori co-op set up in a rented room at our local church school building, stored in a shelf purchased from a closing Joann Fabric. We just brought home the charts we needed. We were in the building enough times during the week to access the charts for follow-up work, but it still wasn't good to have them separate from us.

The shelf up top holds the smaller supplies.
Charts are organized in the two sections (left and right)
with some timelines rolled up in the front (a box on the bottom holds them in place)

Now, I have brought all the charts home. WHAT a relief!!!

Our living room closet looks so innocent:

The right-hand side is normal enough: coats, shoes....

The left-hand side though.... AH!!!!

   The hanging shelf on the left holds many of the supplies needed for the charts; other supplies are now stored with our regular science materials.
   The charts themselves are organized by their subjects with wooden boards - each board is labeled with the subject and the numbering system for the included charts. I didn't end up cutting enough boards and just wanted the project DONE, so I kept the U and GW charts with the first set of Geography charts (that tab is partially covered: it says 1a-28a - then lists the numbers for the U and GW charts); and I grouped geometry and mathematics.
   The blue binder in the lower left contains master copies of various copyable stuff - mostly from primary, but there are a few elementary. I use that less these days since I can print directly from the computer, but it was handy in the school-rented co-op.
    Notice the box? Yep. Straight from an Alison's Montessori order. Perfect!

top-down view

I added tabs for art and music - no impressionistic charts for those, but we can keep some of our poster-prints and the like in here as well; I also have a section in the back for blank posterboard, and I have the pegboards in here for now - that plastic lid in the back is just to hold things more securely in place for the time being.

You can see the geometry corkboard plane to the left in the image above - I made it too big to fit in the box and don't feel like cutting it down ;)

If ever needed, I'll find a narrower box for the rolled timelines, so that they fit in a row towards the front and provide more room for the charts themselves.


I use a similar idea for our Communal Prayer materials in our atrium - much smaller charts, but the same concept - so this file system applies to any size if you have stiffer charts. The available cloth charts would need to be mounted for this system to work; I would love to see storage ideas on those because it seems that rolling them all would take up so much more space. Maybe?