Organizing and Categorizing All our Children’s Books

When my husband told me years ago: “You can buy all the books you want, especially if they’re for the kids,” I don’t think he knew what he was getting himself into! Haha. :p

Books, books, books!

You’ve probably noticed by now that I’m pretty much obsessed with books. And I believe in giving my children a FEAST when it comes to books. (See related post: Why I Decided to Curate Our Children’s Books)

Now before you judge, we don’t have a proper library in the city. So, if I really wanted my kids to read beautiful books, I had to purchase all the titles myself. Books can get pretty expensive though. This is why I buy a lot of them from secondhand book sellers online.

Having lots of books can be confusing though. So, I created an organizing system to better locate books whenever I need them.

Arranging by Theme and Topic

Some people arrange books by color (hello, Home Edit rainbow shelves) and I’m sorry, but that has never made sense to me! I tried it once and though it looked pretty, it didn’t last us a week. For it to work with the number of books that we had, I (and the kids) would have to memorize all the spine colors by heart and we don’t have time for that!

So what works for me is arranging the books first by what kind of book they are (fiction or non-fiction) and then by theme and topic.

Note though that I make a few exceptions to the fiction/non-fiction distinction (ex. I have Literature in the non-fiction section) so I’m sorry in advance for those who will feel a little OC about this haha!

Here are the categories! Take note that some categories have 2-3 dedicated boxes (magazine files) each.

Non-Fiction Books

All non-fiction books are located on a built-in cabinet in the room. The books are organized in Ikea magazine file boxes and I made individual labels for each.

Categories for Non-Fiction Books:

• Science
  • Nature
  • Animals
  • Humans
  • Astronomy
  • Space Travel
  • Science (General)

• History
  • Ancient
  • American
  • Western: Canadian
  • Western: Medieval/Rennaisance (may split into sub-categories soon)
  • Asian
  • Filipino
  • History (General)

• Biographies (may split into sub-categories soon)
• Geography
• Chinese (Mandarin)
• Foreign Language (Except Mandarin)
• Math
• Poetry
• Faith (Different from our entire section for Bibles and Devotionals)
• Christmas
• Holidays (ex. Chinese New Year, Midautumn Festival)

Fiction Books + Activity Books

Our fiction books are located on the other side of the room. All books are stored in plastic file cases I got locally. Each individually labelled as well.

I may need to add more shelves soon because some of the cases here are popping out!

Categories for Fiction + Activity Books:

• Activity Books
• Sticker Books
• Workbooks
• Storybooks (General)
• World Cultures
• Art (includes bios on famous artists)
• Music (includes bios on famous musicians)
• Favorites *

* I encourage Luke (and next time, Dylan as well) to put his favorite books here so that it’s easy for him to access.

Bible & Devotionals

Basically we have an entire shelf area dedicated to all our Bible related books.

Now, what about Book Sets?

There are a couple of book series that I really love and love to collect. Some of them, I’ve purchased as entire sets. My dilemma is, do I split the books into categories or do I keep them as a set?

Right now, my solution is BOTH.

There are some sets that I split like the “Let’s Read and Find Out Science 1 and 2” because it makes sense to get the books whenever I need them for a specific topic.

But there are others that I placed in the shelves as a set. These include the: “Who Was?” biography books, Magic School Bus books and our “You Wouldn’t Want to Be Series” (although this one, I’m considering assigning them in their respective categories already hehe)

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Hope that helps you as you sort your books out!

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