How do you organize your books?I would really like to know.
We moved awhile back and having to unpack all of the boxes of books was a brain twister for me. I couldn't figure out where to put what. We have 4 bookcases, and I would like to get another one. There are a lot of possibilities.
When we moved, I searched the internet for a website or blog that would share how one homeschooling mom out there had masterfully organized her library. I didn't find her. I'm sure she and possibly others like her do exist but where?
Where are you?
As you can see I don't have the most tidy bookshelf but we really do love our books. My main concern was that since there are numerous bookshelves sprinkled throughout the house, I wanted to organize them so they would be useful without experiencing the 'lost book syndrome'. I will often come across a book and think, "Oh!! I forgot about that book! That would have been perfect for so and so back when we were reading such and such."
See the paper taped to the right of the bookshelf? This is the list I came up with to at least get my books out of boxes and on a shelf.Library categories:
- Homeschool books for parents
- Parenting books
- Pregnancy
- Health
- Garden
- Bible
- Language Arts
- Copywork
- Phonics and Early Reading
- Spelling
- Vocabulary
- Writing
- Literature
- Math
- History
- Science
- Nature Study
- Music
- Art
- Christian books (biographies, etc)
- Audio
- Photo Albums
- Picture books (preschool)
Feel free to share what works for you. In fact, please do!
1 comment:
A friend emailed me with ideas of what works for her. I thought I would post them here for others to benefit from:
We also bought a label maker machine thing, idea courtesy of a friend. That helped tremendously! I put the category titles on the labels and then on the shelves beneath those books. On the lowest shelves are the books for littlest readers, then difficulty goes up from there. I tried to put similar categories on the same shelf (ie: all language arts type books together and all science books divided into their categories {ie: earth science, physical science} in the same section of shelves). The labels make it easy to know where everything is/should be put back. I have a "return book" basket on the floor where pre-readers can put books and I re-shelve them when the basket is full.
I was a bit challenged with books that could be put in more than one location. I got a copy of the dewey decimal system to read the actual library categories.
Finally, I had to simply decide where to put the books, knowing I could always change the location later. I also found it helpful to have all the book cases in the same room, so there went the wall space, but it makes it easier because now it's our "library"
area.
Maybe something we have done with our hundreds of books will help your family with your hundreds of books. It's nice to know about fellow readers/book lovers. :D
Happy organizing,
Lin
P.S. if you decide to buy a label maker, to buy one with anti-fade labels. The first machine we had didn't have that kind of label and after a while all my labels began fading. I had to redo them. And again. Finally, just bought a different label maker. In case you think it might be wasteful to buy one (I think they run around $20), I do use it to label other things.
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