Color Coded Library!

I’ve been asked about sharing how I organize our personal library. So, here’s my little post on how I do this. I hope it encourages you and that you can tweak it as you see fit for your family. 

As you know, we homeschool and that means that through the years we have accumulated several books. I found it necessary to have our books organized in some visual way to help keep things simple.

I keep all of our children’s books (these are not chapter books) on a lower shelf near the sofa. This way they are all ready for story time in a comfy place. I haven’t bothered to color code these (but maybe you would like to in your personal library).

© Principled Academy Children’s book shelf.

Each school year I have a basket for our core curriculum we are using. I keep that near the sofa because that’s where I read aloud to our children. Then they’ll either do their notebook work while sitting on the sofa and using lap desks, at the coffee table, or they’ll use the dining table or school table in the other room (it just depends on the room we’re in at the time). At the end of the school year, I just add those books to the genre categories. This way I have my basket available for the next school year’s curriculum.

© Principled Academy My Curriculum Basket

While I categorize our books by genre, I haven’t bothered with branching books by genre into categories by age. I mainly care that books by genre can be found easily and put back easily in one location (if you know what I mean). Given that, we do have the books in a timeline order.

I color code the genres with inventory dots. For biographies I use dots that are half blue and half black (I used my sharpie on the blue dots). And for autobiographies I just use a half green and half black dot.

© Principled Academy

© Principled Academy

© Principled Academy

© Principled Academy

© Principled Academy

Books I have not bothered to use dots for:

On My To Do List:

Important: