Sunday, July 8, 2007

Books & More Books

I love books. I've always loved to read since I can remember. I just love curling up with a good book & escaping away for awhile. When I started homeschooling my sons five years ago, I started collecting children's books in earnest. My absolute favorite place to shop for used books is the Read It Again Yahoo group run by Chris. Oh my - it can be sometimes downright dangerous & the size of the boxes that arrive! I tend to unpack them quickly before my hubby gets home. LOL

Well, when you live in a small space like I do, storage can sometimes be a bit difficult. We already have two five shelf bookcases in our living room. One is for my hubby's books (yes, I married a fellow reader) & one is for mine. They are both packed. Then there are two smaller bookcases - one has only two shelves & one is a homemade three shelf. My oldest son has another three shelf in his room. The little boys used to have the homemade one in their room, but I was getting tired of constantly picking up books & putting them back on the shelf.

A few days ago I decided it was time to cull the books. They were starting to take over way too many surfaces & there were just too many piled hither & yon in the trailer. Boxes were everywhere & I had no clue what I owned. Okay, so I'll confess this was a two-fold project - the books really were getting out of hand, however, on the 14th our big homeschool association (the one that puts on the convention each year) is hosting their used book sale. I started going two years ago & I absolutely LOVE it. Fabulous deals, tons of books, curriculum & readers - it's too good to pass up. So I began to organize. I had already started this earlier in the year but I was determined to get it finished.


My "before" photos

So for the last three days I have been typing in a list of all the children books. I am including the ISBN number, subject (science, reader, history, etc.), title, author, & location. Now I know the location may not stay the same, but I'm hopeful. Of course, some locations are simply, "black crate in living room." ::grin::

"After" - the bookcase in the kitchen. The second shelf is all science & the bottom shelf holds the other quarter that wouldn't fit on the second shelf. The rest on the bottom is poetry, language arts, & Bible.

Aforementioned "black crate" that holds history. The white bin beside it (over sized dish pan) holds more history. The large white bin at the end is all art.

One of the bookcases in the living room. On the top are my smaller scrapbooks, chapter books are on the first shelf & you can see the tops of all my scrapbooks that are on the bottom shelf.

I have finally finished my list. I have pulled a large amount to some how get rid of. I still need to go through all my accumulated curriculum & make decisions on what is going to be kept & what I'm going to get rid of. Tough calls will have to be made.

Final book count, by the way, is 725 books - that includes a set of Childcraft books & a few other reference books but not the full set of old encyclopedias I have shoved under the entertainment system. ::grin:: Now I just need to tackle the rather large pile of curriculum I have hanging around & the school papers that were generated this year. It just never ends does it??


Needless to say, I love books, but the best part of it all - so do my kids.

6 comments:

  1. Did you use librarything.com? I'm really wanting to do this, but I'm wondering WHERE IN THE WORLD will I find time? !

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  2. I went & looked at Library Thing.com when Beth posted about it at SHS. I even opened an account & posted one book. Then I kept going with my list thinking I would add it when I was done. Then I counted...LOL...I own about 750 children's books (I just found more!). That doesn't even include my husband's & my own. It costs to use Librarything.com after the first 250. I'll just keep my list as I have it for now. ~Lisa

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  3. books are a big part of my life too...but I have been much better about culling them, since we move so much. I am more anal-retentive than you, though, so my books are sorted by type (Christian books have an entire bookcase all their own!), and then sorted by author AND size. weird, I know. We have three folding bookcases in our living room, along with one 4 shelf, non-collapsing, and Hannah has one in her room. Scotty has a smaller bookcase in his room too. ALL of these are crammed with books...what a GREAT thing!

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  4. I use librarything too! It is such a wonderful tool. I have way too many books. I can't seem to part with any of them. I am going to make myself do it though!!

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  5. I also looked at library thing... even added one book which ended up on my blog and now I need to take it off... I decided my spreadsheet thing worked just fine for a long time. I haven't updated it in awhile and now I don't even think I'll take the time to do that now that my shelves are all organized by TOG order and books/resources are fairly easy to find.

    GREAT job on the organizing! Did you sign up for Lisa's clean up challenge?

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  6. I will have to figure out SOMETHING to organize my books. I don't have nearly as many as most of you (only 5-6 shelves or so, lol), but I still have no idea what is there, or how I should set them up . . .

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Oh thank goodness! I'm not here all alone. Thanks for leaving me a comment. It helps that I'm not always talking to myself. Right? Hello?