Saturday, March 5, 2011

Organizing the home ~ library books

March 5, 2011 027

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:

March 5, 2011 012 

  • 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.

March 5, 2011 009

  • 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!

7 comments:

  1. Well, normally we carry a "green bag" to the library to carry all our book home. Then we keep it by the door and they HAVE to put the books back in the bag. This works pretty good, until Mommy forgets to take them back for 2 weeks and racks up a $19.50 fine. But, hey!, who's counting, right?!? LOL! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I look forward to hearing how this works for your family, Adriane. We check out bags and crates-full of books when we go, once a week. It's crazy. We are like kids in a candy store. And I include myself in that "we!" Actually, I am the one who checks out most of them ;)
    I haven't come up with a good solution for our library books, and I always have late fees, from cents, to -gulp- many, many dollars :( I will definitely put the date on the calendar and my planner for returning the books -- so simple and so effective!
    Question: how to you get the books back into their "homes" once read? They start there, then move to bedsides, couchsides, and all over!
    Thanks, mama!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I'm not sure we have a true organization of library books here?

    I have a HUGE tote that we go weekly to check out books. I like to stick with a certain number per child. Like 10. Each child gets only 1 movie and so at the end of the week we count to see if we have the correct number of books. If not, we search high and low and usually we don't have a problem because they are pretty good at putting them back in the big tote bag.

    I'm looking forward to hearing more about what your familiy is doing. I really like this idea!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Amanda, the kids need to put me on some kind of limit, and make the library computer lock up or something so that I CAN'T check out any more!!

    ReplyDelete
  5. We usually have a TON of books. Imagine 5 kids X 5 books each + a mom who loves books especially free ones...Actually at one time it was 10 books for each child but we lost books too easily so I reduced the amount to five for the older kids, 2 for the little ones (though I've been known to slide on this one), and 1 movie a piece. That's a bit easier for me to manage. :)

    I guess the biggest solution to our library problem is to be disciplined enough to put the books back in the designated spot and stay on top of returning in a timely manner. I'm determined that we will NOT be paying the library the amount of money that we paid this past weekend ever again. :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. We usually have a TON of books. Imagine 5 kids X 5 books each + a mom who loves books especially free ones...Actually at one time it was 10 books for each child but we lost books too easily so I reduced the amount to five for the older kids, 2 for the little ones (though I've been known to slide on this one), and 1 movie a piece. That's a bit easier for me to manage. :)

    I guess the biggest solution to our library problem is to be disciplined enough to put the books back in the designated spot and stay on top of returning in a timely manner. I'm determined that we will NOT be paying the library the amount of money that we paid this past weekend ever again. :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. I look forward to hearing how this works for your family, Adriane. We check out bags and crates-full of books when we go, once a week. It's crazy. We are like kids in a candy store. And I include myself in that "we!" Actually, I am the one who checks out most of them ;)
    I haven't come up with a good solution for our library books, and I always have late fees, from cents, to -gulp- many, many dollars :( I will definitely put the date on the calendar and my planner for returning the books -- so simple and so effective!
    Question: how to you get the books back into their "homes" once read? They start there, then move to bedsides, couchsides, and all over!
    Thanks, mama!

    ReplyDelete

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