day 241: library book storage

the finished library book storage .. happy days

day 241 and the final touches are going on in the classroom today so it is all finished for tuesday when we start back at school after the summer holidays.  today i am using a pinterest found solution for library book storage as my creation.

i am always chasing library books around our house in order to return them before they are due, it drives me absolutely barmy as both peeps use the library A LOT.  that means LOTS of our time is spent finding books and i am sure it's because we have never had a proper place to store library books once we bring them home.

i went on a picture tour of lisa's home school classroom from pieces of us and found heaps of ideas for our classroom and was completely inspired by her family of 8 ... yikes!  i pinned her library box idea to my ideas for organisation board on pinterest, knowing that i would begin one this school year.

instead of using a box, i found these wire baskets at the hardware store that will fit the books for each child perfectly.  i really liked the idea that it wasn't another thing to house on the floor or on top of a table.  we have put them up next to the reading area in the school room and i made name tags for each one so they would know where they were to be returned to.  to reinforce this putting back idea, i have added clips to the front of each basket so they can attach their library loans printout so they will know what's to be returned to the basket ready for library day.  for those peeps that are able to do this and all books are accounted for on a friday (our library day), without the need for a full scale treasure hunt, there will also be an addition reinforcement of $1 rewarded to them.

the 'handy'  baskets for the library book storage :)

i put them right next to the bookcase in the classroom and also next to the reading area which is on the left of this picture 

finished and ready for all ben's books, we go to the library once a week so this will hopefully save us a lot of searching time!

outcome:  here's hoping that having an immovable place to store, retrieve, and return library books to will stop the valuable time we lose looking for library books.  i am hoping the addition reward will help them remember to return the books to the baskets.  i will let you know in a couple of weeks just how that is going ;)  the good news is at least we now have somewhere to store them that's also away from their own books so the two lots don't get muddled up in the chaos their bookcases are ... looking forward to when that appears on the 52 weeks to an organised home (currently we are in the kitchen organising recipe books and binders)!

my gratitude goes to lisa from pieces of us for this great idea.  i absolutely loved reading what she had to say with regards to her home schooling schedule and the organisation of there things, it was brilliant and so inspiring :)