443.........

..........children's books are now nicely organized in my home.  Yes, I just counted them.  Believe me, it took WAAAAYYYY less time to count them than it did to organize them.  The organization process start to finish took about 5-6 hours give or take.  Yesterday I promised to explain what I did and show the photographic evidence.  However, before I do that, I have a question.  Am I one of the few people in the world who would actually go to such lengths to organize their childrens' books?  I have mentioned my little project to several people now and I'm noticing that no one (yet!) has responded with anything remotely like, "WOW!  What a great idea!  I can't wait to go home and do that with my books!"  So, I think I'm sitting a little left of normal here.  Oh well, I am pretty happy with the result of my labors, and as I've said before, that's what really matters, right?

Before I actually dove into the project, I spent a few days thinking about what our book issues were so I had a clear direction for the organization project.  One of our issues was that we have many, many non-fiction books due to my son's interest in all things factual.  These books were getting mixed in with all our other picture books and it was becoming difficult to find specific books when he wanted them.  Also, we had books spread out throughout the house and all mixed together.  For example, my oldest son has 3 shelves (I mean individual shelves, not bookcases) in his room that held books as well as a wooden book holder his grandpa made.  Additionally, I had at least 4 or 5 book baskets strewn throughout the house AND we have a floor to ceiling bookshelf in our office with the top four shelves holding a mixture of books.  Big tall books were intermixed with little short books, so the short books were getting lost, etc.  You get the picture. 

Given these specific issues, I decided that a big part of the reorganizing would be to separate fiction and non-fiction.  Furthermore, I wanted to divide the non-fiction into different categories or genres.  And to keep them easily identifiable, I decided to color-code the spines of the books with sticker dots.  The final step before THE DAY OF REORGANIZATION was to decide which categories to divide the books into.  This will, obviously, be different for every person and family given your specific collection of books.  My categories were:  animal fiction (books with animal characters), fiction, geography, history, reference, animal reference, dinosaurs, art & activity, and poetry.  On THE DAY OF REORGANIZATION (is that getting obnoxious?  for some reason I am liking it in all caps.......) I used scrap paper to write the category names and placed these papers all around on the floor.  NOTE:  Additionally, I had separate papers for series of books such as Mr. Putter & Tabby, Curious George, Magic Tree House, etc.

If you look at yesterday's post, you can see the photos of BEFORE we started organizing.  (My mom came over to help with this yesterday.  Thanks, Mom!) I started by pulling out all the books and placing them in piles.  Then I laid all the category papers out and we started physically sorting the books. 

   

This photo shows part of the piles of sorted books.  Click on the photo if you want to see it larger.

After sorting all the books, we had to decide how we would color code them.  I had purchased a few sturdy baskets from Wal-Mart for the project.  I decided to put all the Magic Tree House and Magic School Bus books together in one basket, and the Mr. Putter & Tabby, Berenstain Bears, and Curious George books together in the other basket.  Then I placed these on one of the shelves in my son's room.  Next to the baskets on the same shelf I put his set of Veggie Tales books.  These books pretty much took up that whole shelf.  On the bottom of that bookshelf, I put all the animal fiction books. 

Here are the books I described above with a close-up of the Magic Tree House/Magic School Bus basket.

The left photo shows the bottom of the bookshelf with the color-coded animal fiction books.  The photo on the right shows the top shelf of another bookcase in my son's room.  It holds the other fiction books.  The bottom two shelves of that bookcase have baskets for miscellaneous toys.

My non-fiction categories included Geography, History, Reference, Animal Reference, Inspirational, Poetry, Art & Activity, and Dinosaurs.  Additionally, I used some magazine holders I had on hand to house our Robert E. Wells books, "I Wonder Why" books, and Math books.

These photos show two of the shelves of non-fiction books in our large bookcase in the office/computer room.

When I was all done organizing, I printed out this color-coded key and slipped it into a page protector.  It is taped to the side of the large bookcase in our office/computer room.

This is the wooden book box that Grandpa made that was previously in my son's room.  Now it is in our living room and from now on will be designated for our library books.  We have also had a problem with library books getting mixed in with the stash.  Hopefully this will help with that issue.

And here is a little bookshelf next to my youngest son's bed in his bedroom.  It is currently home to 113 board books (yes, I counted them).  These books are not part of the color-coding system.  However, many of these books were mixed in with the many other books in the house, so it will be nice for them to have a special home base again.

Here are a few tips I learned along the way.  MOST IMPORTANTLY..........sticker dots do not stay stuck on the books.  Almost immediately they started to peel up.  This was worst on the books with cloth spines, but it still happened on the books with smoother surfaces.  My solution:  cover ALL the sticker dots with little squares of Contact paper.  When I said earlier that the organizing process took 5-6 hours, keep in mind that about 2-3 of those hours were taken up with me cutting and sticking little squares of contact paper on 443!! books all afternoon :0)  I am thinking this is where I get a little over the top.  I just didn't want all the labelling to be for nothing.  Now the dots will (hopefully) stay stuck so my boys can not only easily find the books they want but (equally important) they will also be able to put them back where they belong.  My oldest son is already learning the system and has been able to easily locate the books he wants.

If you are thinking of tackling a project such as this and don't want to get as extensive as I did (in hindsight, I don't think it was that necessary to separate fiction/animal fiction and sticker all of those), I recommend just separating your fiction and non-fiction on different shelves.  This would help tremendously in being able to quickly find the book you need.

I forgot to mention one thing:  I have a big Rubbermaid tub in a closet that holds all our holiday books.  I have LOTS of Christmas books, and some for other holidays as well.  Now they are in one place and I can just pull them out and plop them in a basket when the holiday/season rolls around.

Comments

[childrens bookcase]

You did a great job! I think it turned out very organized. I think I should do some cleaning up too. We have a children bookcase and it all cluttered and dusty. It’s begging for my attention. Haha! I was able to get some useful organizing tips form you. Thank you for sharing your organizing experience with us! I am very happy that I came across your blog, at least I know where I should start. Hope you continue sharing more interesting blogs with us; I would love to come back here and read your other blogs when I have time.

[Laurie]

We just organized our books and already my daughter has a better sense of where to find things. I'm curious, as a follow up, how well did this system work for your kids in the long run?

[Andrea]

If you REALLY want to get serious, check out this homeschooling book organization system highlighted at Preschoolers and Peace.

http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/PreschoolersandPeace/106703/

[Julie K in Taiwan]

Good for you! So far all our books fit into one spot, with lots of supplementing from the library. I've been trying to motivate myself to catalogue them on http://www.goodreads.com so that faraway grandparents can easily know which books we have, which series we like, etc.

[Amy @ Let's Explore]

You are awesome! We have so, so many books around here too. Actually, many of my books are still in tubs in the garage, and I try to rotate them through the house as much as I can. I like to keep my non-fiction books separated too. I haven't gone as far as color-coding, though -- but now I am SO tempted! :)

[Lindart]

I did something just like this (the colored dots) when my classroom had a few hundred books, like you. That was 28 years ago and now I have literally thousands of books! It was starting to get very hard to find a specific book I knew I had, so I decided to number them and put them in a database. I had categories, like you do, but more of them. I chose a letter for each category, like "B" for Birds, then a number: B.1, B.2 etc. This was fine for awhile, but there were so many books, I never really got them all onto the computer, and each school year we were adding more and more books, I couldn't keep up with it all. Every time I would go to work on the database, I'd find that somehow 2 books got the name number, or books were missing so those numbers were free, books weren't getting put back where they belonged (it was a staff member's job to put away books each week, but I never found one who could actually numerate and find the correct letter). So it was a constant never ending battle, and I never got past about "I" in the database (Insects). So now I'm revamping once again - I have boxes and boxes of new books waiting to find a spot on an already overflowing set of bookcases. So I started at the beginning again, and revamped my categories to have sub-categories for easier finding, and no numbers because books never get put back in the right numerical spot anyway. So "A" (Assorted animals-animals that can't be put into a specific grouping such as "mammals") is now sub-categorized into A.African A.Facts A.Stories A.Australia A.Habitats A.Jungle etc. Each of the sub-categories is small enough that if I wanted a book about the animals that live in the rain forest, it is easy enough to just quickly look through the A.Jungle books. I am hoping this will make putting books away much easier for the designated person, who only has to shove it into the correct subcategory, somewhere. I am also throwing (giving away) tons of books I would never read to the class, that I haven't chosen for the last ten years, or that are way too old for the children, Also books that I have more than 2 of (I have 2 classrooms, I will never need more than 2 of one book) This is giving me lots of room to add new books to. Almost every Robert Munch book is gone, There are a few a like, but most cause too much disruption in a classroom situation. The silly/crazy books are gone, colorful over-stimulating books with no redeeming factor are gone, many of these donated by a parent on their child's birthday. I've gotten much more specific in the kind of book parents should donate, but even then I still get totally inappropriate books. There was a time I wouldn't get rid of a book just because it was donated, but now that I have such limited shelf space, I've just can't afford to use it on books I will never read to the children again.

Good for you for getting a good start on organizing your books. It will be a lot easier to put your hands on a specific book in a hurry!

Linda

[Mary]

I love the system. Glad you gave the info about contact paper. We move on Monday and I plan on doing it with ours (although our 2 little ones are both under three so we don't have that many genres yet).

[maya]

I love the color coding system. Luckily, we don't have 443 books yet, so I could probably do this pretty easily at this point. I would love to be this organized. But I probably would've said a few choice words when I realized the colored dots weren't going to stay on! :)

[Suzy]

You're embracing your inner librarian! Way to go! The only thing I think I would add is a reshelving area. A place where you can stack the books you use during the day so they are reshelved correctly later on.

[Melissa]

Great job! I have all of our Christmas books in storage, too. I get them out the day after Thanksgiving, and they go back into the closet on New Year's Eve. Its fun becuase they are new every year!

[Jenna]

I rotate our childrens books so not all of them are out at once. I try to change them once a week and keep some we haven't read many times out, along with some favourites. Plus we hit the library regularly too. Otherwise we drown in childrens books in our small house!

[Ines]

I really like the color coded system...we did it at our school..but I never really thought about it for home....now, we are coming into alot of books at our house...a little organization never hurts anyone:)

[Ginnette]

Wow! That is a lot of books :-) We do not have that many so it should not be so difficult to sort. Thank you for sharing your system with us.