Do you have questions about big families? I have answers. They might not be the answers you were hoping for but since the title of this post promises answers, I’ll give it a shot.
Q. Do momys…do the library?
We used to, but haven’t checked out books in several years. Since the cost of gas has gone up and our library is in the opposite direction from the rest of civilization, it just wasn’t cost effective. Our smalltown library has a very poor selection and an interlibrary system that is sadly lacking. For the price of a trip there and back and a second trip to return the books – and maybe some late fees or interlibrary loan fees (it’s not free here) we found that we could buy several good used books instead of checking out a lot of trash and tripe. Since we try to read books that are worth owning, this makes sense to us.
The upside is that we’ve been able to build our library over the years without spending any more than we would have in gas and library fees. The downside is…we’ve been able to build our library over the years…
Q. Can you show more pictures of your bookshelves? How do you organize your books? Dewey decimal, chronologically, by subject, by author?
A. [stifled maniacal laughter] Are you thinking of organizing your books like mine? You’re smart to ask for photos first! Our library is a work in progress for several reasons:
- We perpetually have more books than space. It’s a sickness. We just can’t stop buying books, and when we try to wean ourselves off somebody invariably gives us new books or points us toward a sale we can’t resist.
- It’s not just me and Perry. I think the condition is genetic, because the children suffer from it as well. They’re all building their personal libraries while we build our family library. In a house of 1183 square feet. Bringing home new books is like a game of chicken. Who will quit first?
- We let our children use the library. Somebody isn’t crazy about the aesthetic appeal of clearly labelled shelves, which makes it highly unlikely that a book will ever find its way from the hands of a child back to its rightful home.
- My organizational system is only a rough draft in my head. It goes something like this: …never mind.
Seriously, I do have a system.
- Fiction is divided roughly into age groups: board books are on the bottom shelves, easy readers are next up, then chapter books, with classics/mature fiction up high. Poetry has a shelf of its own.
- Theology is in alphabetical order by author’s last name.
- Art & music are together, as they should be.
- History is divided into American history, world history, and reformation. Books within each category were originally organized by title or subject, though that fell by the wayside long ago. Right now the children’s history books are integrated with the adult ones, but I don’t know if they’ll stay that way.
- There is a separate bookcase for homemaking/how to books.
- Another bookcase holds science, with each shelf covering a general area: field guides, animals, earth science, creation vs. evolution, etc.
- Various sets – fiction and nonfiction, juvenile and adult – are located anywhere and everywhere.
- A few precious autographed, antique or rare books are up high, out of reach of small illiterate hands.
- Reference books are together.
I’m sure there’s more, but that gives a rough idea of the layout. Photos? Not today. No way!
The children each have at least one shelf of their own personal books in the library in addition to their own cubbies in the bedroom. Some have far more. They also have books in storage, and we’re considering enacting a new rule that goes roughly thus:
“Any books that do not fit on your personal shelf shall be considered excessive. If you are not willing to put your excessive books into general circulation (still retaining personal ownership), they must be put into storage so that we will have to space to acquire said titles for the general family library.”
I would love to replace the bookcases in the library with individual wall-mounted shelves running the full length of the walls and reaching from floor to ceiling. I think we could fit far more in our limited space and it would look nicer too. It’s on my to-do list.
I would also love to run a single high shelf around most of the rooms in our house. Books would be within reach of most adults but above eye level, leaving the walls with a fairly empty feel, I think, rather than the cluttered look when we had our bookcases spread throughout the house. If my calculations are accurate, we could house most of our books this way, even in our small home, getting rid of most of the bookcases and opening up more space for general living. We could hang framed photos just below and create a unified decorative theme throughout the house.
What do you think of that idea? Can you picture it?
Q. how do you get packed for a vacation…delegate or do it all yourself? 
)
A. I decide how many outfits we each need to take based on the length and reason of our trip – e.g. 2 formal and 4 informal. Then I let the 4 oldest girls (13-18yo) pack independently, offering opinions as requested. The next few children down the line (ages 11, 10, and maybe the 7yo) pack for themselves with heavy oversight from either me or the older girls.
I pack for myself and the 3 or 4 youngest. I also do most of Perry’s packing and he fills in the gaps.
That covers the clothes and personal possessions. For the rest, we often make a list on the whiteboard and check off items as they are packed. This way nearly anyone can help. The older girls sometimes help with food prep while I pack for the younger ones, but we have become pretty adept at trading off duties. The biggest goal and challenge for me is simply keeping everyone and everything moving forward.
Q. How do you get all the house cleaning done? Does it ever get done all in one day, or do you do it one room/section of the house per day? How do you divide the cleaning chores?
A. Define “house cleaning.” We pick up, sweep, etc. in the kitchen, dining room, living room and bathroom several times/day. Deeper cleaning gets done as needs are noticed. Not always the best policy, since you’re most likely to notice footprints on the wall, snotprints on the windows, or dust bunnies divebombing from the ceiling fans while you have a houseful of company.
Our division of labor changes a couple of times/year, but here is the current breakdown:
- Perry (5yo) – empty small trash cans, any job relating to poop (I promise, he likes this), swat flies
- Rachael (7yo) – take out compost, straighten toy area, AM dish team
- Becca (10yo) – dining room, deck, AM dish team
- Natalie (11yo) – library, trash, AM dish team
- Megan (13yo) – kitchen, laundry room, PM dish team
- Lydia (14yo) – animals, yard pickup, PM dish team
- Kaitlyn (16yo) – living room, bathroom, PM dish team
- Deanna (18yo) – laundry, PM dish team
I confess our younger ones tend to slide these days. They are capable of more, and our bigger girls did far more at a younger age. This was partly because I needed the help and partly because I invested the time to train them. The temptation for the young mother is to do it all herself because she doesn’t have time to train her young ones to help. The temptation for the older mother is do it all with the older children with they don’t need the help of the young ones.
Q. How do you organize socks?
A. Our sock solution used to be easy and straightforward. All our children were girls. All of their socks were white and roughly the same style. There were only 2 things to know:
- If 2 socks are the same size, they match.
- If they fit you, they’re yours.
Now, with 4 teens in the house and 2 more close on their heels plus 2 boys thrown into the mix, it’s infinitely more complicated in practice, though it can still be summed up rather easily. The current policy reads something like this:
- If you don’t like white socks, buy your own.
- If you buy your own, you’d better recognize them when they come out of the laundry.
- If your socks look just like mine, they’re mine too.
And that’s all, folks. Sorry if I didn’t get to your question today, but I’m feeling very much like too little butter spread over too much toast. Thin, but not in a size 6 way. More in a mother-of-10-needs-to-spend-less-time-on-the-computer way.
The other Moms are taking questions this week too.
- Smockity Frocks, who reminds me that I could make better use of the spiral notebooks I bought in August.
- Raising Olives, who answers questions about science in her homeschool curriculum.
- Common Room, who discusses the mechanics of having adult children at home.
Upcoming topics for 4 Moms:
- Surprise, but not for the reason you think. It’s because I’m too lazy to look up the list of planned topics. Really. We have a list. You don’t believe me?
Recent topics:
- October 20 - 4 Moms find time for projects
- October 13 - 4 Moms: Keeping the food budget down as the prices go up {linky}
- October 6 – 4 Moms: keeping up with housework in the midst of homeschooling
- September 29 - 4 Moms talk about memorization {and 2 giveaways!}
socks….we have the same rules. Except that I run the green room for our theatre group so we have extra black socks that I buy every show for the actor who has forgotten socks, so we have white and black socks!
I sooo wish we even had book shelves! My book solution is books everywhere The kids have shelves over flowing, Dh an I have books in boxes in the garage, on top of dresser’s, and under the bed. I dream of a shelf running along the top of the walls but no way to get them down as needed because we have tall ceilings. My new strategy is my Nook, at least I don’t have light reading spread around the house getting dropped in the washer or bathtup, for me….and my oldest wants one tooo, that will clean up a ton:D
We did shelves along the top of the wall in one big room in a house we used to live in. It was nice, but it did require some planning to get a book down. You have to remember to put the shelves high enough to ALWAYS be out of the reach of toddlers. That means you have to take into account that they might climb up the back of the couch or otherwise act like monkeys.
Of course, training them not to mess up the books is an option, but I prefer to leave the training opportunities to things that won’t make quite as much of a mess or leave such big dents on their heads. Some stuff I prefer to just make impossible for them. You’d think that already having them trained to leave the books on your regular bookshelves alone would be enough to prevent them messing with books on high shelves, but then you clearly wouldn’t be thinking like a toddler.
LOL!! Love the sock “rules”!! Very funny and very practical…. we are a family of 6 and I”m about there on socks!!
I loved hearing how your family handles issues that we have also had to tackle. (Although I only have 5 young’uns)
We started a “dot” system for socks years and years ago~ I posted it on my blog some time ago. First born gets one dot of fabric paint on bottom of sock; second- born gets 2 dots; etc. When socks are outgrown, if there is any life left in them they are handed down to the child in need and the appropriate number of dots are added to the sock. This system revolutionized my house when the children were all little~ boys and girls~ and all the socks looked almost (but not quite) the same size. And then my young children could mate socks and put them away!
So glad I found you!
Love the sock situation. We used to have that in our house (although on a much smaller scale with only 4 kids and mum and dad) and we just used to have one huge sock basket and helped herself from there. As long as they were the same colour we put them on never mind if they were the same size or not! I have a question maybe for a future Q&A. I understand your beliefs on Marriage, children etc but I was wondering if your eldest girls wanted to move out of home into their own place before marriage either to go to college/uni or just to have their own place would this be a possibility or would you prefer them to stay at home until they married? In the same vein when the boys are that age would you encourage them to move out to their own place or would you prefer them to stay at home until they find a nice girl to settle down with? I am just interested and apologies if you have either explained your views in a previous post or if you think I am being far to nosy. You have every right not to answer it of course! Great post again, you make me giggle on a fairly regular basis!
Socks: Each kid gets two lingerie bags w/ their name written across the top of each. One bag for white socks, one for colored socks. They go in the appropriate wash cycle, get returned to owner in bag, owner puts own socks away. Done and done.
Our solution for the library (I only have six kids, but toddlers and libraries do not always mix well) is that the Bookmobile comes to our house. The lady we bought the house from was the previous driver of the Bookmobile, and when I said I homeschooled, she signed us up to be a stop! It has worked great for us since A) Mr. Mike does not charge us fines for late books and lets us keep them as long as we want to and B) we have friends with an autistic son who cannot “do” the library, but likes the Bookmobile, so his brothers order their books ahead of time and they come to our house.
Your book organization system sounds just like mine. One of these days I want to get letter labels on the fiction spines, at least, so they will all be in abc order by author…when I have the time. Like you, my library looks great in my head. Those book sales just call my name sometimes, and I can’t resist. My 20 yo, who lives on his own, teases me, but he is as bad as I am because he’s already had to build two bookshelves to hold new books since he moved out!
I love the socks rules. My son who is 14 has often been known to be wearing two mismatched socks that don’t belong to him…but as you said, if you are wearing them, they are yours! He says the horses don’t care if his socks match, and you can’t see them when they are inside boots anyway.
I enjoyed your post. Thanks for sharing.
Blessings,
Heather