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I’m excited to share a guest post about organizing your homeschool books from organization guru, Surya from The Busy Mom’s Club! Read on for some fabulous book organization tips and tricks.
Books are a natural part of every homeschool. If your children are learning, they will most likely be using books to learn. Depending on their age, they might have workbooks, reference books, reading books, or activity and coloring books on different subjects.
Having all those books around is great, but it can also get really messy really quickly!
Today, I’m going to give you a few ideas on how you can organize your homeschool books, so they don’t take over your house!
I love books, I always have. And my kids are showing the same signs. Which is awesome! But, it also leads to tons of books all over the house if we aren’t careful. We get books from the library every week, we have books of our own, then add in coloring, activity, and workbooks, and BAM! Books everywhere.
It’s a good problem to have, but still a problem. So, here are some of the ways we organize our homeschool books.
Look It’s New!
One way to keep your homeschool library organized is to use a rotation strategy. I use this strategy to some extent for all our books, but mostly for our reading books.
We have toooons of books for pleasure reading. I even have some of my books from when I was a kid that my mom had saved. But, we can’t possibly read a hundred books at a time or store them on our book shelf!
So, I kept a few diaper boxes and I have random books stored in each box. Every few months I grab a box and take the books out. Then, I put the books we currently have out into the box to be shelved for a few months.
I love this idea because my girls get really excited to get the “new” books out and their faces light up when they see a book cover they like.
You could also use the rotation idea by theme. For example if you had books about a certain season or animal, you could keep them together and get all the Summer books about in May, or something. I just did them randomly and it works fine, too. You just never know what you’ll find in the next box!
Not Just for Reading Books
I have recently started to implement the rotating strategy with our coloring and activity books. My girls are 6,3, and almost 2, so we have a lot of these types of books. I used to have them in a big basket, but it just got messy and the books on the bottom never got used.
So, I got a couple of magazine holders and stored some of the coloring and activity books in them. Then, the others I put in a box and rotate them with the same idea as the pleasure reading books.
Using magazine racks for coloring and activity books is a great way to keep them organized and avoid a big, messy pile. This way nothing gets “lost” in the bottom of a basket.
How to Organize Homeschool Books that are Out
Even with rotating a lot four books, we still have a lot of books out. I used to just keep them on a regular bookshelf, but my girls weren’t quite to the age where they could neatly put books back if the shelf was pretty full. I decided to invest in a display bookshelf and I am so glad that I did!
Not only does it look much nicer, but the books are easier for my kids to see. When they have to put books back on the shelf, there’s no more frustration of the books falling over. They just put them back in an empty slot and voila!
A display bookshelf was a great solution to keep my girls from getting frustrated when putting their books away. And it is easier to keep organized than a regular bookshelf where the books are always sliding down.
Give Each Child a Spot for their Homeschool Books
My two older girls have really started doing school every day. As we went through the year, we acquired more and more material for them. I decided to give each child a drawer to keep their items.
We had a two-drawer unit that we weren’t using, so I put it on top of another set of drawers that we already had in our homeschool area. This kept the drawers up off the floor and away from the baby! The, I put each girl’s materials in their drawer and now they know where to go to get their school materials. I try to give my girls as much independence as possible because #mamaisbusy.
I use a 2-drawer unit to keep workbooks and activities for each of my girls. I use this for whatever they are currently working on. This way they each have their own drawer and they can get their school “stuff” each day when we start. And, if they just shove stuff in their, then it still looks neat with the drawers closed. 😊
Another Option for Organizing Homeschool Books
If you don’t have space to have your own homeschool library or you just don’t want to store that much stuff in your home, there are some other options for resources.
One option we use A LOT is our local library. If you are wanting to avoid having lots of materials around your house, this is your best bet. If you live near a decent library, they are wonderful. You can find fiction books, non-fiction, and books to fit any theme and age range.
Our library also offers story time with a craft or educational activity, so you may be able to not have as many craft supplies in your house, too.
Embrace the Books
Homeschooling naturally brings with it a lot of books. But, you don’t have to be drowning in books to have a rich homeschool environment.
If you rotate your homeschool books and materials, you can have a variety of materials available without overwhelming your home.
About the Author:
Surya shares advice to make everyday life easier at The Busy Mom Club. Whether it’s cleaning, organizing, or parenting tips, Surya has great tips and advice! You can find her at www.thebusymomclub.com.
Ashley helps parents who want to homeschool find the resources they need to successfully teach their children. Ashley is a former teacher, current homeschooler, published author, and designer behind Circle Time with Miss Fox printables as well as the creator of this website, The Homeschool Resource Room.
Great tips! I have really deep shelves in my storage area so I put blankets and stuff in the back and a tote on its side up front as a make shift book shelf. Into these I organize my books by historical unit. Some stories fit better with different eras of history, so I bring them out when I am studying that time period. That’s my most exciting development for our organization. Well done on your! Always a huge mom victory!
Thank you for sharing your ideas! We have a few of those deep shelves, too. Stuffing them with blankets is really smart 🙂