The Surprise Advantages of Homeschooling

Whether they agree or not, everybody knows the obvious advantages of homeschooling: individualized education, more room for creativity, avoidance of ideas/practices that the family finds objectionable, and the opportunity to instill one's child/ren with one's own values. (FTR, not all of those are among my family's reasons for homeschooling.) And everyone knows the disadvantages, too, chief among them the foregoing of a second income for most homeschooling families.

But what about all the little side benefits? The little things that nobody would use as a real reason to homeschool but that make life a little nicer, anyhow? Here are a few I've discovered so far:

1. My dogs are so damn happy to have people home all day, they can hardly contain themselves.
2. We can have whatever we want for lunch.
3. Related to #2, leftovers never go bad in the fridge.
4. The grocery, bank, pharmacy, or anywhere else when they're crowded? NEVER!
5. In the early afternoon, when all the school-age kids are in school and the preschoolers and toddlers are home taking naps, we have the park all to ourselves.