Organize Your Bookshelves
I have been the library's highest volume customer for years. You would think they would kiss my hand when we walk up to the counter with our bags full of books but for some funny reason all we get are dirty looks and rude comments. I don't know what is wrong with those people when we are clearly doing our best to keep the library in business!
Back when both my kids were still into picture books we came home with an average of 50-60 books a week. To say my kids are avid readers is an understatement. It was quite a relief when both of them moved into longer chapter books. With all the reading they do I have never attempted to buy their books. Why should I spend money and waste storage space on books when that's what library's are for?
After this trip last year I said NO MORE!
Since then I have changed my mind. As my kids have gotten older they have come home with trashier and trashier books. I always picked out classic books for them but they would only read them after they were done with their Goose Bumps and alien books. Of course we had a lot of conversations about the difference between great books and not so great books but it wasn't sinking in. Who would read Little House on the Prairie when you could read Animorph? I don't want to fight with my kids about the books they read. They love to read and I don't want them to feel like I'm controlling every little aspect of their lives. I am of course but I want to do it as covertly as possible!
I am now on a mission to buy every classic book I can find and spend less time at the library. Since I'm still as cheap as ever that means I'm looking at thrift stores, used book stores and garage sales. My only problem is that I forget what books I already have and I've bought a couple books twice!
So now we come to the organizing part of this long post. This is a great project for sick people because I laid on the couch all morning while my kids brought me stacks of books. I typed up all the authors and titles and printed a copy to keep in my purse that I can reference when I'm shopping. I'll update it everytime we come home with a new stack of books.
I think we're going to need a lot more book shelves around here.
We've cut our library trips down to only twice a month and I have the kids reserve the books they want online. It saves us time and the kids do a lot less browsing.
Do you do something similar? How do you keep track of all your books?
Labels: Book Reviews
posted by The Lazy Organizer @ 5:11 PM
33 Comments
33 Comments:
mine are 5 and 3, so we have really just started the library adventure. good advice to keep in mind about logging books already have or read. i already can't stand going and spending an hour with my head tilting sideways trying to pick out books for kids! who thought of that system anyway!!
I'm a huge fan of Swaptree. It is a swapping site for books, cds, dvds, and games. You just enter the ISBN numbers of books you have to trade, what you want, and when there are things available you you can trade! I have had really good luck on there finding some of my favorite books.
I try to rotate my books on a pretty regular basis. I rarely read a book twice (unless it is one of my FAVES!) so I do a lot of trading with friends to make room for my new books.
Brilliant idea! I know, because I had it years ago and never followed through...and have often wished I had.
You can often find classic titles at amazon.com in their clearance section for real bargain prices.
I don't organize them, but I buy them. I love books and don't always have time or desire to chase a 2 year old through the library & re file everything she gets out.
My kids get books every year for birthdays & Christmas, and often during the year because I say "We need some new books around here."
Free book database program :)
http://spacejock.com/BookDB.html
I've not used this extensively, but it looks good.
When we moved into the house we are now living in, we inherited a room FULL of books. Unfortunately not all of them are in great shape and most of them are dated. I have yet to sort them and find a nicer way to store them. For now, they stay haphazardly shelved in a basement room. UGH.
we like to browse the library sale shelves and have picked up some great classics for 50 cents or $1.
The only problem there is you have to make sure your don't accidently take them back to the library.
I don't buy books very often because I can't afford them, and I rarely read a book more than once. (I already know the story, so it's hard to read it again!) And I was in the library field for a while too.
I don't know how your kids manage to read all those books in the short period of time before they are due back to the library.
I think what you need is a shelving unit for each child, in their rooms or somewhere central in the house. I'm always tempted to alphabeticalize books, but when it comes to children's books I would put them in order by size or perhaps by series (eg. those Goosebumps books, all them together in order)
But that's just me. I was like that when I was a kid too (putting them in order) and books only cost me a few dollars and I could afford one with every allowance ($5) I got.
Honestly you should feel very lucky that your kiddos like to read that much. I would love for my son to, but he hates to read. He will do it if he has too, but he really dislikes reading.
Anyway, feel lucky your kids love to read, but how on earth do they read THAT many books in one check out? oh my goodness!
we use book mooch which i think is similar to swaptree. you do have to pay to ship a book to someone who want to mooch it from you but in return you get the books you want shipped to you for free! it allows you to great an inventory of books to give and an wish list of books you want and then emails you when one becomes available. it saves time and money!
http://bookmooch.com
My girls love to read as well.. they own SOOOOOOOOOOO many picture books that they just aren't looked after as well as they should be. Recently I boxed up about half and put them in storage and will switch them over middle of next year.
We are big library goers too, I let the girls browse and read as many picture books as they like in the hour we spend there but they are only allowed to choose 4 each to take home. They live on a special high shelf in the family room just for library books so that I can keep track of them!
Mind you one of the girls knocked her front teeth out at the library last week and after surgery to remove three teeth it may be a while before we are ready to go back!
My kids are 3& 1 so we don't do library trips yet. My son has quite the collection of books so far - which I'm happy about. He already seems to enjoy reading, I read to him and then he 'reads' it back to me.
I do have some ideas for you to find books though. There are online yard sale groups local to many areas as well as a freecycle group where things are just given away. I've also heard about websites that make it easy for people to swap books, so you can swap out one of your doubles for a new one.
I understand how they read all those books b/c I was the same way. Was? Am. (When not running after two kids). Dh and I scour used books sales and discount racks all the time. Our books are organized by genre. Some genres are by alphabet. Some day, we'll have a list, but it's no small task with our books numbering in the thousands.
When you have that many books, it is useless to try organizing by genre or alphabetized. You have to go by size, and it helps to stack books the "other way", i.e.lying down. That way, you can stack right up to the next shelf. When I did this, I fit almost TWICE as many books on a shelf. Cool!
Kids (and grownups) can easily read that many books. My kids often read a "good" book, while going through plenty of junk in the same week, depending on their mood at the moment. So on their bedside table will be "the lord of the rings", "tintin" a couple of joke books, a reference book like DK books, and my favorite, "George and Harold and the attack of the mutant toilets" or whatever. Classy stuff, oh yeah.
There are no libraries near here, so we buy or trade with friends. Then, we give tons to the school library. That way, we can borrow them back any time! We keep favorites, but I am ruthless and never ask the children's permission. I just box 'em up when no one is looking! Bad Mommy!
we get lots of books from the library too, and it's BAD when you are a bit late with that many books. yeah, it's only a dime a book, but when you have 20 ....
Library Elf has been my savior for keeping track of library books.
i like the way kathleen f organizes her books: How to organize books
Lara I couldn't agree more about buying the books. I hit thrift stores weekly searching for appropriate books for my kids..books only cost 20 cents each and we've found some great classics.
I created a closet library for my daughter and she keeps them all organized by series in there.
I gave up trying to remember what they have but they sure do so the thrift store shopping has become a family affair.
Laura
I wasn't kidding when I said my kids are avid readers! My seven year old sat down yesterday and read a 200 page book, start to finish, and then she picked up and started another one. They are blessed not to get car sick like I do so they read whenever they're in the car.
Mamafitz, that is some serious book organizing! I cannot believe she bought a scanner!!!
Organizing my books is easy because we only have a few hundred but I can see how buying books the way we have been doing, our collection will soon grow into the thousands.
My kids have really been into the Childhood of Famous Americans series this month and I feel the need to own every single one. I have no idea how many that is!
I heard of a website called Yesterday's Classics where you can download classic books for free. I've been searching the site but can't find the free download part. There are, however, tons of classics reprinted in easy-to-read type with the original illustrations included. Not terribly expensive, either.
http://www.yesterdaysclassics.com/catalog/full_catalog_online.pdf
I know what you mean about "modern" books. I have to watch what my oldest picks out even though he is only 4....there are some picture books that I prefer not to come home with me. :)
What a FABULOUS idea! I am so impressed!
I've done something similar for some of my craft supplies like paint and ink that I am likely to double buy. I have a list in my purse.
You guys are so nice. Not single one of you commented about how I misspelled bookshelves wrong in the title of this post!
Hi,
You can sign up at PaperbackSwap.com It is free. Then you can add books on there by just typing in the ISB number. It is so much faster. They put them in your personal web bookshelf. You don't have to swap them unless you want to!
It is great!
I'm a Grade 4 teacher, so I wanted to make sure my students have access to really good books. I use the Newbury Award list to guide me. Good luck with your quest.
What a great idea. I have the bookshelves that are little cubes. I try to organize books and group them in a cube by same author or genre. My kids love to read too and I have found now that tacking the library receipt to the bulletin board so it doesn't get lost is the only way I keep from spending a fortune on late fees because we can't find those last books.
Before you even left your latest comment on my blog, I was thinking to myself I am so glad Keri is reading longer books because now the stack I bring home won't be quite so heavy!
I also just read your latest comment on Kim's site about being the only woman blogger out there who didn't use to aspire to writing her own book. I am right there with you ... but my mind might be shifting gears, but that will be a LONG time from now!
I am so glad to read that there is another mother out there who isn't fond of Goosbumps or Animorphs. NOw, to top it off, my 9 year old is starting to bring home dragon fantasy books. I wouldn't mind in the least if I knew she were reading good books inbetween but it has been awhile since I've seen her read one. The one thing that slowed her down was when she picked up some rather thick dragon books and I told her I would have to review them. I read a juvenille book about king Aurthur and it had some extremely awful sex/incest/bloody with craft in it. Later I saw it reviewed in a family magazine as the years best book for children ages 9-13. Once she realized she would have to wait for old, slow mom to check it she opted for one I would approve right away.
Don't get rid of any doubles you buy. I like to do book races with my 9 yr. old. We start a book at the same time and see who can finish first. Then we go out to IHOP to celebrate. This is how I got her to stop animorphs and read Johny Tremain.
My 6 year old is only just getting into little chapter books that he brings home from school for homework but I can see that I'll have the same problem soon. I love the on-line reservation system for the library because it saves me so much time!
I have been having the same thoughts lately about needing to just purchase a good selection of classic books (love D.I.) and less library trips. I love the library for non-fiction books in which they can look up information about whatever subject they happen to be interested in at the time, but the fiction they find/choose is mostly mindless. I'm pretty sure they choose it by the cover art. My girls are really into the fairy books right now. I guess that's better than dragons, or Animorphs or Goosebumps, but maybe not.
I am curious how you organize the library's books so that you do not lose them. We homeschool and are doing literature based geography and history cirriculums so we borrow a lot of books from the library. Actually 2 different libraries...so we have to be careful to return each book to the correct library. I'm still trying to come up with a good system to keep track of all of the books.
ooo...what a wonderful idea, both the collection of classic books and the ongoing list. would you mind sending me a copy of your book list? dd is only 9 months old, but i would love to begin such a book collection and am not quite sure where to start. Thanks!
Amanda
abh5e8@mizzou.edu
There are lots of children's classics and certain that I just HAVE to have in our home library. I beleive that there is no better thing than a book, so I would much rather buy books than toys for my kids. I am always on the lookout for good books at thrift stores and garage sales. Every now and then I find 75% off sales on new books for them. I even found a big bos of practically brand new books, lots of them hardback) off Freecycle. Once every summer we have a garage sale and sell some of the books we can do without, or ones they have grown out of. We still go to the library about 2x a month, and that is enough. I was getting tired of loosing the books, paying fines and whatever. Good luck!
Organizing? Books?? Do people do that? Outside of a library, I mean? Because I've got every available flat surface covered with them, despite the most noble of efforts to pass my non-treasures along to charity book sales and deserving friends. Yeah, it's an illness...
Oh, we love the library, too. But every time I go there's a fine waiting for me.
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