Man Builds 35 Desks For Local Kids Learning From Home

Sep 26, 2020 by apost team

As schools reopen this fall while still adhering to the government's social distancing rules, some parents have decided to embrace homeschooling. One of the biggest challenges that parents have to overcome when homeschooling their kids is the lack of appropriate furniture. This was the case with one parent called Mitch Couch, who is based in Leemore, California.

He realized that it was inconveniencing for his kid to use the dinner table as a desk while homeschooling and decided to take things into his own hands. He created a simple study desk for his child, which was cheap, easy to make, and space-saving. He later shared photos of the simple desk online and offered people a tutorial to make it at 99 cents.

It is almost a month since the reopening of schools, and many schools have put in place interventions to ensure distance learning. If parents were told a few months ago that their children would have to learn from home, few of them would have believed it.

In fact, only a few of them would have imagined that their homes were about to be transformed into small schools or that their kids would have to watch their teachers and classmates online during class sessions. Well, this is already happening, although parents are experiencing way too many challenges.

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Some parents have the opportunity to send their kids into hybrid programs. The programs allow children to attend some of their classes from home and attend some school lessons physically. Even with it, however, many kids are still spending significant time studying from home. Among the furniture that students get while at school is a desk, which acts as their workstation when they are dealing with any form of schoolwork.

Do you know how many parents had study desks at home before the pandemic hit and distance learning became a norm? Well, not many. With the school calendar about to begin, many parents are rushing to purchase desks for their kids. To many parents' disappointment, however, most stores have already ran out of desks. The ugly truth that parents have to live with, therefore, is that desks will not be available immediately, and that it would take the stores a few more weeks to restock.

Even though desks are available in some local stores, they might not be affordable. In fact, this has become the case in most stores primarily because affordable desks move fast. This means that most of the available ones are expensive. Many of these parents are forced to allow their kids to operate from their dining tables.

Faced with these circumstances, one dad called Mitch Couch has decided to be innovative. He realized that it was annoying for his kids to study at the dinner table. He developed a simple desk plan which was affordable, easy to assemble, and foldable to save on space. He later shared the desk pictures on his social media platform and offered his desk plan for sale on Etsy for 99 cents.

He was contacted by Grocery Outlet, who offered to pay him to make 25 desks for children in the local community. The number later increased to 35 desks.

"They asked for 25 desks to start but the need was great so we upped it to 35," Couch wrote on Instagram. "My wonderful wife helped me through the whole thing and even surprised me with four desks she made while I was at work. The owners wanted to keep it low key but I just have to let others know how much local business means to a community like ours."

Anyone who wants to assemble desks similar to what Couch created can get the plans from Couch's website. He says that each desk's supplies cost $20.

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