How to organize digital homeschool bundles so that you actually use them

When you love grabbing high quality, digital homeschool bundles as much as I do, it’s easy to find yourself overwhelmed with all the files, all the logins, all the places to download. 

And then you start to wonder if you even used all of what you purchased, which quickly becomes a question of – Did I even really need this bundle?

Then you have buyer’s remorse, which comes with a lot of unnecessary guilt… until you see another bundle + you have serious FOMO – thus starting the cycle all over again. 

Whew! Talk about a run-on sentence! Good thing I’m not writing this for my college professor 😅

We just finished promoting the incredible Homeschool Collection by Homeschool Resource Co. and I ABSOLUTELY LOVE every single bundle Brooke (from HRC) puts together! I’ve participated as a contributor multiple times and love sharing her bundles with my community here! 

During the promotion, one of the academy members asked me how I organized all of my digital resources so that they can be easily accessed / found when I need them! 

I thought this would make a fantastic blog post, so here we are! Let’s dive into this thing! 

What is a digital homeschool bundle?

There’s a newly trending type of homeschool resource out there – and it’s a digital homeschool bundle! 🥳

These things are incredible IF (and only if) you get your hands on the right one!

I’ve purchased and even created a LOT of great bundles over the years and trust me when I tell you – there is a difference in the quality of bundle you get depending on where you get it! 

Now, Brooke + The Homeschool Resource Co. team put together (in my opinion) the best of the best bundles! She does the Homeschool Collection once a year around back to school time and also offers a fun coupon collection for Black Friday, a Gospel Collection for faith-based homeschool resources, and others throughout the year! 

She’s amazing! 

Basically, a homeschool bundle is a collection of digital homeschool printables + resources that are typically only available individually in the contributor’s homeschool shop for a set price. But when you purchase a bundle, you get the entire collection for one low price! 

The recent Homeschool Collection was valued at over $900! 

Yes, that means, if you had purchased everything inside the bundle individually, you would have spent more than $900. 🤯

BUT because the products were inside the bundle, the families who grabbed it before it was gone got over 50 high-quality digital homeschool resources for just $34!! 

Now, because bundles typically have a HUGE bang for their buck, the purchaser (you!) gets a certain amount of time to download all of the resources inside the bundle – but that leaves you with a LOT of downloaded files to sort through and keep track of so that you can actually get your money’s worth in the end! 

And that leads me to today’s blog post! 

Don’t get stuck in the trap of buying tons and tons of resources for your homeschool if you’re not going to use them!

I mean, I love when you support my small business by purchasing my resources, but mama – At least have a plan for using them! 🫣

Our perception of value is based on what we get out of something and I could share the most highest + best valuable product with you, but if you don’t use it or get something out of it, it will mean nothing to you… And therefore, my brand will start to mean nothing to you. ☹️ And even more than I don’t want to lose you as a community member, I don’t want you to get frustrated with your homeschool. 

SO – Let me help you create a plan for your digital homeschool resources so that you can actually use them, get your money’s worth, feel GOOD about your purchase, and come back to support my small business (and others!) again and again! 

How to organize digital homeschool printables + resources

The first thing you’re going to want to do is find a storage system you love! Personally, I love to store everything in the cloud so that I can access it with my phone + send it to my printer in the middle of our lesson, because that’s how I roll sometimes. 😂

Choose one of these storage systems:

• Your computer hard-drive 
• Google Drive
• DropBox
• Amazon Storage

Personally, I use Google Drive because it’s super easy to access + manage! Plus it’s pretty cheap if you need more storage than the free plan covers! 

🚨 Hack alert!!! If you need more storage with Google Drive, just create a new account 😉 – You can have yourhomeschoolname@gmail.com, yourhomeschoolname2@gmail.com, and yourhomeschoolname3@gmail.com OR you can even do email addresses for each kid and use those google drive spaces to house specific resources for them! 

The options are easy with Google Drive + easy is what I need in this stage of homeschooling! Ha! 

Speaking of homeschooling stages…

Next, you’re going to create folders inside your Drive so that you can easily find what you need when you need it! 

Here’s how I would suggest creating your folders to achieve the maximum amount of efficiency + organization possible:

1. Create a folder for each month of the school year
2. Create a folder for extra resources
3. Create a folder for “Needs to be Organized”

These folders should be on the first page of your Drive space. When you purchase a printable or bundle and you do not have time to organize the content, throw it in the “Needs to be Organized” folder so that it doesn’t get lost + you can work on it later. 

The monthly folders are going to hold all of the resources you’ll be using each month of the school year. So, YEP – You guessed it, you need a plan for the year so that you can be organized with your digital content!! 

Luckily for you, the academy will walk you through creating a full curriculum map for your year, and a detailed plan for your homeschool! There’s templates + instructions + community – all there to help you have the best homeschool year yet! 

So grab your curriculum map + let’s start making some sub-folders inside your monthly folders!

Personally, I would suggest creating subfolder for each week inside the month – Week 1, Week 2, etc. THEN, inside each week, I would begin to categorize your bundle content! 

Week 1 Folder might have a sub-folder for each child with their resources from the bundle inside OR Week 1 Folder might have subjects you’re covering that week inside (math, english, history, etc.). From there, you can begin moving your bundle resources into the appropriate folder.

Now, you probably noticed I had you create an “Extra Resources” folder in the beginning… This is for all the extra bundle content you might not use this year because it’s a different topic or grade level. 

However, you PAID for that digital homeschool content! So let’s keep it organized as extra resources for the future! 

I would probably organize sub-folders inside the Extra Resources Folder by grade level, then by subject inside the grade-level folders!

Lastly, for an extra effort award… When you use a piece of content from the bundle, move it to a “USED” folder. You can even categorize it by how helpful or awesome the content was! 🥳

So maybe create a USED + LOVED folder and a USED + WON’T USE AGAIN folder!

Digital Homeschool Bundles are LIFE when you can get your hands on a good one! Let me know if you enjoyed this post in the comments + share how you organized your folders too!