Bring on the Books

The post-Christmas clean-up Mommy is ready for action. For some reason, after Christmas I get in this major clean-up and clean-out mode. This year, being overly aware of our rapidly-approaching homeschool kick-off in less than 2 weeks, I am trying to organize our books. This is a monumental task for a person who has loved and collected books for almost 40 years. My Dad is also an antiquarian (rare & old) book dealer, so the books keep on coming our way!

So, how to organize a lifetime's worth of books in a manner that is easily accessible for all? I found this freebie online, Library Thing, which allows you to input all of your books, catalog them and then search your own collection by the 'tags' you create. Today, I happily entered many books for our homeschool, classifying them by historical time period and reading level. This makes me very happy!! No more guessing when I'm at 1/2 Price Books as to whether I have a book or not because I can print out my library... Also, I can quickly search for a book in our database when I'm looking for something to correspond with our history or more books at a certain reading level. Yipppeeee. Oh, it is the little things!

To add to the beauty of it all, hubby went and bought our playroom/schoolroom 2 more cheap bookshelves. Those books that have existed in stacks around our house can now breathe deeply and have a place of their own.

Here's hoping your Christmas celebration was meaningful and life-changing. And may your books be happily categorized in 2008!