Guest Author - Kimberly Misra

So many books, so little space. Many homeschoolers have homes overflowing with books. How you can maximize your storage space and organize your collection? First consider your storage options. Can you line your family room with bookshelves? Set up a narrow shelf in a hallway? Provide a book bin for each child’s room? Buy a magazine basket for the living area? Create a nature area by the back door with field guides and equipment? How about keeping a large basket or tote bag of books in the car? Store seasonal books in a dry place and switch them out on the first of each month. The new books will seem fresh and exciting and you’ll gain more space. Get each child a tote bag for library books and encourage them to return finished books there for the next library trip.

Next, think about how your library and how it is organized. Non-fiction is generally shelved separately from fiction. Non-fiction books are sorted by topic while fiction books are grouped by reading level. You can do the same. Use baskets or bins to store picture books with the covers facing out. This makes it easier for non-readers to flip through and find the book they want. Line up chapter books and novels on a shelf or stack them with spines facing out. Roughly group them by age level, give each child his own shelf of age-appropriate books, or store them in the child’s bedroom. If your shelves are wide make two rows of books, one behind the other. Put seasonal books or those above reading level in the back row.

There are several ways to organize non-fiction. If you don’t have a large collection, it’s fine to just keep the books mixed on a shelf. If you have lots of non-fiction you’ll want another method. If your children are super organized, keep your books sorted according to topic. You’ll have an astronomy section, a botany section, a Civil War section etc. If your kids are like mine, this system will last about two hours and then all will be chaos.
Another idea (again from the library) is to mark the book spines. Use clip-art or colorful electric tape to create easily recognized categories. All ocean books could have a strip of blue tape while a clip-art cloud could designate weather books. This makes it easy to find and re-shelve books.

To make sure all those books get read, put up periodic displays. This can be as simple as just propping a few books up on a shelf with their covers facing out. Libraries display books this way and they are frequently the first checked out. If you display it, kids will (usually) read it. Try to keep a shelf dedicated to display. If you’re learning about the solar system, for example, you can showcase relevant books on this shelf.

Don’t forget to sort through your collection regularly, and weed out books that are outgrown or that no one reads. Donate them to your library or a local charity. With the space saved, you can get more books!