So many books, so little house...

[TandLMommy28]

We bought our house pre-kids. After apartment life, it seemed like a palace. But three bedrooms and a tiny kitchen don't seem so amazing when we are approaching our new life as a home school family. I don't have any SPACE... I managed to make room for one bookcase and one computer desk for school stuff. But I know we are going to quickly out grow this space. We have no basement, no empty rooms, no empty closets.

 

I did manage to do a mega-purge of our entire house and probably donated/tossed/sold about 1/3 of everything we own. I'm feeling a little better now but still nervous.

 

So I'm really looking for some stories of people making it work in a small house. Classical education is really all about tons and tons of books. Where do you keep them all in your very small house? How do you stay organized?

[Melenie]

I would love to have a large room converted into a library. As a kid I used to play library all the time and imagined I would have a large one in my house one day. Yeah right never going to happen!

 

Instead we have book cases everywhere. One large one in our room, two large ones in the living room and the kids have one small one each in their bedroom. I try not to buy too many books and as we outgrow them I sell them. This is not my dream situation, but it will have to do for now.

[King Alfred Academy]

I would love to have a large room converted into a library. As a kid I used to play library all the time and imagined I would have a large one in my house one day. Yeah right never going to happen!

 

Instead we have book cases everywhere. One large one in our room, two large ones in the living room and the kids have one small one each in their bedroom. I try not to buy too many books and as we outgrow them I sell them. This is not my dream situation, but it will have to do for now.

 

Same here. There are 4 of us in what we call our "Little Tiny Baby Pretend House"...594 sq ft. student housing. It's tough, but we make it work. Our books (dh is an English PhD student so he has a lot too), supplies, ect have taken over everything, but the key for us is to make it not visible and to rotate our current items with items we don't need at that particular time.

 

We have a large storage unit with doors (for our current curricula/books) in our living/dining room as well as a large open book case for our more "prettier" books.

The boys have a bookcase in their room and 1/2 their closet (its quite large actually) is homeschool storage containing a bookcase (quiet time activity books, books/curricula we aren't using, games, ect.) with a 3 drawer plastic "dresser" on top (math manipulatives, nicer art supplies, logic/card games). I also have a filing cabinet in there full of items I have printed off, school files, ect. The top of the closet has shelves that I have stored more books and stuff.

In the kitchen is a large dresser that holds all of our craft and every day art supplies. Drawers are filled with paint supplies, paper, google eyes, markers, ect.

And finally, there are baskets scattered throughout the "house" that hold books.

Hope this helps!:001_smile:

[mcconnellboys]

Just stack 'em in the corners all the way to the ceiling. Think of them as columns (titles out)......

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

We bought our house pre-kids. After apartment life, it seemed like a palace. But three bedrooms and a tiny kitchen don't seem so amazing when we are approaching our new life as a home school family. I don't have any SPACE... I managed to make room for one bookcase and one computer desk for school stuff. But I know we are going to quickly out grow this space. We have no basement, no empty rooms, no empty closets.

 

I did manage to do a mega-purge of our entire house and probably donated/tossed/sold about 1/3 of everything we own. I'm feeling a little better now but still nervous.

 

So I'm really looking for some stories of people making it work in a small house. Classical education is really all about tons and tons of books. Where do you keep them all in your very small house? How do you stay organized?

 

I have a homeschool friend in a TINY house and is pregnant with baby number 8 (she thinks 8 and 9 I think she is way too small for 8 and 9 being 3 weeks away from delivery, we will see) anyway, She uses the clear, long, thin totes for books and puts them under beds. She does it by grade level (each kids under their bed) but if that way doesnt work for you maybe you could do by subject or something. Just a thought!

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

 

1/2 their closet (its quite large actually) is homeschool storage containing a bookcase :001_smile:

 

 

Oh that is another thing she does, she put closet organizers in the closet and puts school supplies in it. She just showed me everything she does, I am sure I will remember more, she was very quite creative actually! Do you have any extra cupboards? Drawers? Or any you could condense? You could use those if you do!

[Amy Jo]

We put a bookshelf (easy to do with a few brackets and a 1x10) at the top of the wall, over the windows. We just added a tall bookshelf. This is part of the reason I bought an E-reader, so I didn't have to buy a hardcopy of the public domain books. So my vote is to decorate the upper part of the walls with books :P

[robsiew]

We have a larger house, but we still use the library for most of our books... the only books I buy are ones I know we'll use over a long time or curriculum books.

[TandLMommy28]

Thanks for the tips. I plan to use the library but I just LOVE books and want the house to be full of them. I did put some bookcases in my closet and have created a small school area in there. I just saw where someone posted those Ikea shelves and I am thinking about putting those up... somewhere! My house is small and open--very littl wall space! GRRR! If only I could convince the hubby to get rid of the darn TV and huge entertainment center... that area would be PERFECT for a huge bookcase and baskets!

[bethben]

We use Tapestry of Grace. I don't have the books out for the four years. I have 4 of the largest under the bed storage boxes I could find and they are all under one bed (if you put the bed against the wall and leave about 4-5 inches away from the wall, 4 will fit). I also had a friend who put shelves all the way around the top of the walls in a bedroom.

 

Beth

[mommy4ever]

Thanks for the tips. I plan to use the library but I just LOVE books and want the house to be full of them. I did put some bookcases in my closet and have created a small school area in there. I just saw where someone posted those Ikea shelves and I am thinking about putting those up... somewhere! My house is small and open--very littl wall space! GRRR! If only I could convince the hubby to get rid of the darn TV and huge entertainment center... that area would be PERFECT for a huge bookcase and baskets!

 

Ok, so you have open space... Would you be able to create a space by using a shelf where only the side is against the wall, as in the 15", the 3 or 4 going out?

 

I'm not good at explaining.. here is a link

http://www.ikea.com/ca/en/catalog/categories/departments/living_room/

scroll through to the 4th picture, it's has the Expedit shelf, it creates a separation, but can look quite nice, and give you more storage.

[Suzannah]

The only really interesting thing I do (and it's not original) is I keep sheets and blankets in the rooms in which they are used and towels in the bathrooms so my linen closet is my school closet. This is where I keep supplies which are not in use. Things we use on a daily basis are in fabric bins on a bookcase in our dining room (where we do school). Reference books or items that are used intermittently are on bookcases, here and there. I have a wall map that rolls down so I can put it out of sight when we're not using it.

 

Well, I guess there's one other thing. I flipped my living and dining room a while back. I was running out of space and figured out that I could have a bit more if I reversed it.

 

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showpost.php?p=482917&postcount=9

[Susan in KY]

Sounds like it's time for built-in book shelves. :D

[MamaAkins]

We bought our house pre-kids. After apartment life, it seemed like a palace. But three bedrooms and a tiny kitchen don't seem so amazing when we are approaching our new life as a home school family. I don't have any SPACE... I managed to make room for one bookcase and one computer desk for school stuff. But I know we are going to quickly out grow this space. We have no basement, no empty rooms, no empty closets.

 

I did manage to do a mega-purge of our entire house and probably donated/tossed/sold about 1/3 of everything we own. I'm feeling a little better now but still nervous.

 

So I'm really looking for some stories of people making it work in a small house. Classical education is really all about tons and tons of books. Where do you keep them all in your very small house? How do you stay organized?

 

How small is your house (square footage)? What is the layout? Is it possible that you have spaces that could be used for something different than their intended purpose to help "stretch" the available space? How many children do you have?

 

We bought our house when we only had 1 child (who was only 2 1/2 at the time). It seemed huge! Add in 3 more kids and 10 years and suddenly our house doesn't seem so spacious! My dad lives with us as well, so we have 3 adults, 1 almost teenage, and 3 kids....plus I babysit for 2 other children during the week! Our house is a two story, 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath--totally about 1450 sq. ft. We converted our dining room into another bedroom for my dad. The three girls share one bedroom, my son has the small bedroom and we have the master bed. We have to do school at our kitchen table. We store most of our school stuff in rolling carts. We have one very large bookcase that holds our books in the foyer (behind the front door). It's tight, but we make it work--mainly because we have no other options!

[TracyR]

We live in a small apartment. Your place sounds almost like ours. LOL.

We have one computer desk that we took some plywood and made it bigger to hold two computers. We have a book shelf near our TV in the living room and a tall bookshelf in our tiny 'dining room' by our kitchen table.

I have books stacked between our printer and computer desk, on both sides, books between our t.v and book shelf stacked up. I took some small boxes we had and converted them into shelves. I stacked them on my daughter's dresser for her books that she reads, and for our lapbooks.

 

I guess we just live with the book clutter. But its a nice clutter to have really. At least its not garbage! LOL.

[Rosie_0801]

What do you have under the kitchen table? Luckily I'm in possession of a shed at the moment, so I only have tinned fruit under the table. In the past I kept boxes of books under there.

 

Rosie

[wy_kid_wrangler04]

Another thought, is there any way to re-arrange things to create more space? How many bedrooms is your house? If your kids are the same sex could you put them together and do bunk beds then have any extra bedroom for a schoolroom?

 

Or if financially you could make this work, what about getting one of those TVs you hang on the wall and sell the entertainment center and put built in bookshelves next to the tv??

[Chris in VA]

I know of someone who put a shelf above each door in her house--so she ended up with something like 24 extra feet of shelving space for books. Even if you just put up a shelf in each bedroom over the doors, you'd have quite a bit more room. I'd just put books there I wanted to store, not those I wanted to read.

Under the bed is great, under the nightstand works, or under a coffee table.

[MrsMe]

Thanks for the tips. I plan to use the library but I just LOVE books and want the house to be full of them. I did put some bookcases in my closet and have created a small school area in there. I just saw where someone posted those Ikea shelves and I am thinking about putting those up... somewhere! My house is small and open--very littl wall space! GRRR! If only I could convince the hubby to get rid of the darn TV and huge entertainment center... that area would be PERFECT for a huge bookcase and baskets!

 

Good luck with that tv idea. TV and Dh's go together.:tongue_smilie:

Go up. Go from floor to ceiling. I have 2200 sq feet and one child. But zero wall space and two rooms you walk through to get anywhere else. Doesn't make for much space. It's useless space. Just commiserating on that point.

[Irishmommy]

I heard of someone who put each child's school books in clear totes (lidded with handles) and put them under each one's chair. Then she had chair covers that masked her books nicely. You could do the same concept if you had a table cloth on your table. I have those plastic drawers under the table. Each child has his/her own set of drawers. Then we keep pencils/crayons/etc. in stackable/snappable containers I got at the fabric store. I'll see if I can find pics. Another option (since I doubt your dh is going to get rid of the TV), could you pare down the giant TV center and get a smaller one? Or is it one you could separate into two pieces, and just use the bottom piece? Oh, and we converted half our garage into our school room. We gave up the option of parking our cars in there, but we never did that anyway because of all our junk!

[PenKase]

Happy Mother's Day!

 

As I lie in the bed on Mother's Day, sick with a head cold, perusing these boards, I happened upon this post.

 

Just this morning hubby & I were discussing how we can maximize our wall space to accommodate our ever expanding collection of books. We live in a two bedroom, 2100 sq. ft. house with a lot of windows..beautiful to look out of when the lovely natural sunlight comes through and every view reveals the beautiful wooded back yard but...a bummer cause we hardly have any wall space either! We've already got our dinning area wall lined with bookshelves, floor to ceiling, and a bookshelf on one side of the flat screen & fireplace combo. Hubby did come up with a PP suggestions to have built ins put up around the firelplace & tv area and our girls, despite the fact that they do have to share a bedroom, do have a pretty big loft area dedicated to them that we can reconfigure and add shelves there too. Come to think of it, we also have some space in our converted garage/family room & if dh agrees to selling the treadmill that hardly ever gets used, we could use that space as a school room/study area as well!!! Oohh, that would be really nice.

 

I guess my suggestions is to make the most of any vertical space you may have and/or have dual usage spaces, as other have already suggested. I simply adore books too and even though the book clutter doesn't bother me one bit, it does drive dh loony most of the time. Using our heads together, I'm sure we'll come up with some kind of solution.

 

All this to say, I feel your pain OP. Good luck to you!

[melissel]

We have a larger house, but we still use the library for most of our books... the only books I buy are ones I know we'll use over a long time or curriculum books.

 

Here too. I really only buy books for DD7, who is a voracious reader and reads the same books over and over--and I tend to only buy books I consider to be high-quality, to limit easy access to the "junk." I buy a few for DD4, but she really only likes the same book once or twice. We have an excellent library system, so we use the library a lot for her, for me, and for audiobooks.

 

She uses the clear, long, thin totes for books and puts them under beds.

 

Hey, this is a great idea! We've been discussing culling some books from DD7's collection--the ones she's too old for or that I "disapprove of" (I'm looking at YOU, Junie B. Jones!), but that she's not ready to let go of yet. An underbed box is a great solution--easy to access, easy to see the spines, yet out of sight and (mostly) out of mind. Thanks for that!