Week 3 -- Boxes and Books

While I have been going through the last few boxes of assorted items from the garage, I also decided to get a jump on Book Week(s) by sorting through all those boxes of books. We started with a very rough sort -- fiction/non-fiction -- but ended up with a couple of extra categories like homeschooling materials and children's books.

The coffee table is piled up with curricular materials and books bought while we were homeschooling. The boxes and books on the floor are children's books, all the way from picture books up.

Non-fiction seemed like an easier sort than fiction, partly because we have (slightly) less of it, especially if you don't count all the Jewish books filling about half the shelves in the living room. The rough sort of non-fiction was done using the Dewey Decimal system rather loosely. I made up 10 signs with the most general categories, along with a list of what types of subjects are included in each category.

We found that some categories were somewhat subjective, so we'll probably end up doing a more specific sort as the next step. I was also deeply disappointed that, despite our extensive science-fiction collection, we didn't seem to have a single book that fit into Dewey Decimal category 999 -- Geography and History of Extraterrestrial Worlds. Too bad.

The sorted books currently extend down the front hall.

And wrap around the corner into the kitchen. But I rather cleverly placed most of the cookbooks there, so who would know?

Tomorrow I plan to finish going through the last two non-book boxes. Both are full of papers, which tend to make for slow going. Then it's posting things to Freecycle and back to sorting books.

In other news:

Snow came to Dodge today. Nothing like what is happening in the Northeastern part of the US, but enough to bring Dodge to a dead stop due to lack of snow removal equipment. The forecast is for continued sub-freezing temperatures, so this may be around for a few days.