Finally, finally. I've been praying for the answer to organizing our books ~ our many, many books. Grouping by author was absolutely useless, as was grouping alphabetically by title. I even looked into several computer programs designed to help me keep organized, but they just weren't the right fit for our situation. It finally dawned on me to organize them as we use them: by relevant time period! Oh, what a relief.
I put the system in place a couple of months ago while Mike was off from work to help wrangle the kids, and it was a chore getting everything in order! I went through every book and noted on the front flap in which section it belongs. But I'm so glad I did it ~ it is working wonderfully. For the first time in years, I can walk to any of our numerous shelves, find the correctly labeled section, and quickly pull out a certain book. So nice.
We have biographies, history, and historical fiction all organized by historical period. We also have several shelves devoted to what we call "Our World." That can include books about cultures, maps, weather, insects, how things are made, and all kinds of other science materials. Finally, we have several shelves for what we call "Story Books" that hold all the fiction, readers, and just-for-fun materials that don't really fit any other category.
This has been such a blessing, since we are a Charlotte Mason family, and we mainly use books as they correlate to our history studies. When the kids pull a book on their own to read, they drop it in a basket in the school room when they are finished. HW is responsible every day (it's in his ChorePack) to shelve books from that basket. For the most part he does a good job of it, with just a little follow-up from me.
We do have one problem, though. We still, even after a ruthless culling, own too many books. What a nice problem to have, and we feel very blessed, but it is still a problem. Another paring down is in order, and I'm going to have to get tough about it. Until that happens, though, I'll just ignore that stack on the floor, and enjoy my neat and tidy shelves.
3 comments:
This is too funny!! I just told my 16 yr old son that we needed to sort our history books into time period sections! And our Science into- Biloogy, Astronomy etc. So we don't spend so much time digging!! I had already sorted last year according to subject, but we too are mostly a CM family and waste lots of time checking every history book looking to see if it fits the time period or age appropriate. I can't wait to get this done!
Oh, what a horrible post!! How could you say anything about too many books, culling books, or any other similarly convicting post?! Just have your hubby build more bookshelves--that's what I do!! LOL
Seriously, I organize our books in a similar fashion. All of our history/biography books are organized chronologically, then art books together, poetry books together, literature together, science together, etc.
I have a friend who does hers Dewey Decimal System--how intimidating is that?! :)
Grouping by time period is on my to to list. Non-fiction and historical fiction will be my target (I'd really like to find a place where you can enter a book title and the time period is given--it's not always obvious to me). I decided to keep our biographies alphabetical by the person featured. When we come to a person referred to in history, I'd easily find them alphabetically.
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