Organizing the home ~ library books

I have been in an organizing mood lately so I’m probably going to bore you to tears with posts on organization!  Sorry!   A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I am on a quest to organize our family and home.  I really need this.  Ever since the birth of our fifth child, I have felt like I am drowning and can’t get on top of this household.  I really don’t like that feeling.  (And I don’t want it to sound like it has anything to do with my baby boy either.  I just need to learn how to better manage a larger number of children.)

Since we are approaching the third birthday of our child who made us a “large family”, I figured that it was about time to get this home under control!  I decided to tackle the areas that felt most out of control first: homeschool, morning/bedtime routines, laundry, and menu planning/grocery shopping.  There are posts in the works for those areas but today I thought I’d share about organizing our library books.

You see, today we made it to the library which happens to be one of our favorite places to visit.  We had a blast.  And I even have pictures on my phone that I’d like to share but I don’t have know where to find the cable to do that.  {Ahem…organize the computer cables…wink}

But back to the library…

We had not been the library in a long time.  A very, very long time.  And why?  Because we owed the library money for overdue books and a lost movie.  Ay yi yi!

Today we paid our fines and have set a system into place that will hopefully keep us from having to do that again.   Here’s what we did differently today:

 

• As soon as we walked into the house, we put all library books in a designated spot.  Each book is supposed to return to this spot when the child is finished reading it.
• We wrote the child’s/parent’s first initial and the number of books checked out on the calendar on the day that we will return the books.  I limit my children to five books each except for the two little ones who usually only check out two books.  When it is time to return books, the children will find their books and we will make sure that he or she has the same number as written on the calendar.
• Movies are returned earlier than books, so we wrote those down on the appropriate date.  The movies were placed on a little shelf by the TV.

• Our library includes printout library checkout cards (receipts) in the back of each book.  I removed all of the cards and clipped them to the calendar.  When it is time to return the books, if there are not the appropriate number of books for each person, we can check the books against these cards to see what is missing.  Maybe knowing the name of the book will help the child remember where the book might be.  Hopefully, the books will make it back to the designated book spot and we will never need this step. 

We’ve not tested this system to see if it will work yet.  I’ll let you know if it doesn’t. 

How do you organize your library checkouts? 

I’d love to hear your ideas!