Organizing all those Homechool Books

I often get asked, "How do you organizing all your homechool books." It has been quite a challenge and every year I find I am running out of room in the classroom.

The hardest part is keeping track of all those books. I like to be able to grab what I need immediately. I remember the days that I needed a book on a subject and I couldn't locate it after looking over and over in the mass of books. It stunk because I knew I had the book.

On this side of the room I keep most of our paperback books, readers, games, and chapter books.

I am wall to wall shelves. The only down side is that I don't have much room to hang things. The reality was I needed to optimize space for books.

Getting rid of the stand alone book shelves was the best thing I have ever did. The shelves with the brackets that adjust has added lots of book space to our school room.

At first it was still hard to find what book I needed. Then came the cardboard and plastic magazine holders.

 On the opposite side is the curriculum, reference books, hardback books, and even some paperback books.

 I love my label maker. They come off easy if needed and make it look neat. Every homeschooler should invest in a label maker for organizing.

 As you can see from all the varies pictures I try to label by subjects.

 I have labels for different areas of science. Like botany, insects, human body, space, and general science. Other labels are countries, health, math, presidents, language arts, Magic School Bus, and many other.

 I used the plastic magazine holders for the curriculum and every subject is in one holder. I put the subjects together on the shelf.

As you can tell I still have boxes that don't have a home. The reality is our homeschool in going to take over our family room in the basement. I have a shelf already- it is just a matter of getting it done.
We are planning on doing it here soon. I would like to have shelves like this in our office. Jeff and I have a lot of books ourselves and we need more space.

Around a year ago I also bought a software program, "Book Collectors" You can scan in your books and put them in by subjects. You can also link to it by mobile app. If you are like me I like to go to used books sales. For the most part I know what I have.Some books I must just love to much because I found doubles, triples on several books while putting them in the system. I like the fact that it has a loan feature. I hate it when I loan a book out and its been way too long and I don't remember who it went to.