Showing posts with label Spreadsheets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spreadsheets. Show all posts

Friday

How to Organise Books


Books, books and more books!!!!

My husband and I like to go on holiday to relax and READ.

So each time before we go we do something rather important.

We made sure we have decided on what books we are going to read.









Years ago we always had to come to an agreement over books before we could pack because we needed to pick 4-6 books that we both wanted to read and then we could share the books while we were away, simply because books took up weight in our luggage.









Now we take our kindles with us and we don't have to share any books at all so we can have completely different reading lists.
But we still sit down to make sure we have thought about the books we want to read and make sure we have them downloaded from the cloud onto our devices so that we can read what we want at any time regardless of WiFi.


Oh the joys of the kindle.

Even if we are still using our original old Kindles with our lighted cases which we absolutely love.








We have loads of ebooks and I'm usually keeping an eye out for good ebook offers so the amount of those on our Kindles are ever increasing.


By this stage you may be wondering why I am talking about books & ebooks when this is part of  my posts about Organising


Books in My Study


So what about the books on my bookshelves in my Study?


They used to look like this






but then after a good tidy up they look like much better than this and the bookcases and more details about the tidy up can be found at  Organized Bookcases

As you can see I have 4 bookcases here and they are still full plus a few small crates of books which I have decided I will give away when I finally get round to reading them.

The cupboards at the bottom of two of the bookcases do not contain books - they have folders, files puzzle books for Kids Work and Language study files and notes from our time learning Dutch while living in Belgium.


My husband did suggest one time that we could throw out all the books on the bookshelves and only have ebooks.



Sacrilege!  cried our oldest son who was with us at the time.



As for me I just said

"what if we want to read them again?"  


and 


"we haven't even read them all yet"




Bookshelves - categories

The farthest bookcase is all Christian Novels in alphabetical order by author except for the bottom shelf which contains Bible Study Books from all the years of leading youth groups & homegroups

The next one contains the rest of the Christian Novels in alphabetical order by author except again for the bottom shelf which this time contains our non-fiction Christian books.

On the third Bookcase the top 2 shelves are devoted to Bibles, commentaries, dictionaries and Bible info books.
The last shelf contains my complete Herron Collection of Agatha Christie novels - Red hardbacks.

On the last Bookcase I have family photo albums, cookbooks, other miscellaneous books that are special to me, my journals from when we lived in America and Belgium and some Dutch novels.


We did do a bit of a clear out when we were moving house last time but there are still many to keep so they needed to be sorted better on the shelves and an inventory made of them.







How do we remember all the books we have and not end up buying repeats?

The basic answer to this was mentioned above - I made an inventory of all my books.

This was not a quick easy job, it took quite some time but I was determined not to fall into the trap that my husband had done on various occasions previously - Yes Fred has been known to buy the same book twice!


How do we keep a note of what we have?


I make an inventory of all the real books we have.  (I'll cover ebooks later)



One solution for this is Spreadsheets.


A)  I have my spreadsheet of my list of the full set of Heron Books of Agatha Christie novels that I had collected over the years.
Each book contains 2 novels.




as you can see because I now know I have got the whole collection I really have this list to keep more info like the date each novel was written, the order no. of the novels and dates of movies made.

This of course is just a section of it here.



B)  I also have a spreadsheet of my list of Nelson DeMille Books. 
Fred & I have become quite the fans of this action thriller author and have most of his books in paperback.





Looking at his now I see I didn't fill in all the rest of the Y's  because we have now read all the books of his that we own.



C)  I have a spreadsheet for all the other books on the bookcases  (an excerpt from it is below)



but it needs updated now yet again although not too many new ones to add - mostly the ones our son buys us for Christmas & birthdays because he always buys a book "you can hold and turn real pages".




D)  Then when I had done all that I decided to make a spreadsheet of ALL the books of Agatha Christie in Chronological order.

That wasn't enough for me so I started adding in the DVD, Television, and cinema adaptations noting all the dates and whether I had watched them and which ones I had on DVD etc. - all colour coded of course.

I already had got 3 different Christie reading lists from various places online so I got most of my info on dates from these and which books had gone by different names in the UK and USA.




I think I got a bit carried away with my colour coding too.




Another solution for this is to use an App.


A couple of years after tackling those spreadsheets I thought maybe an app for my iPad would be a good idea to keep all the data there because I love my iPad.

Also perhaps easier to carry the info around with me on the iPad, to make sure WE remembered which books we already owned, rather than have it on spreadsheets.

So several different times I have had a look for apps and of course being the person I am I really only want a free app or at least one that is very very cheap.


Well I found a few apps and tried them out







but they seemed to be even more time consuming to put in all the data than my Spreadsheets were!

In fact some of the apps were not at all straightforward for inputting the data.




My Final Solution for this is the Spreadsheets


So I decided to go back to the original Spreadsheets and just keep updating as I buy more or  just when I'm sorting through the books.

I use Readdle Documents App on my iPad and I can keep copies of those spreadsheets there and of course it is easy enough to make a change to a spreadsheet on the computer and then save a new copy of that to the App.



Now I have to say it did take a lot of time to do these spreadsheets as I kept getting caught up in the


"Can I bear to part with this book?" 

and  

"Maybe I can find this book as an ebook"

as I went along.





Ebooks

I am still trying to finalize a list of all the ebooks we have - thank goodness Fred & I share our ebooks under the one account but as I go along I can save it as a PDF anytime I want for ease of quick reference and put it on the Kindle app on my iPad as well as into Readdle Documents.

See Agatha Christie and ebooks files:






However I have to admit that the list of ebooks will never be finalised.
We will never stop buying books!
But we do try now to get the majority of our books as ebooks so we are still buying books but they are so much easier to store! 

Of course the great thing about ebooks for the kindle is the fact that when you go to purchase an ebook in Amazon you get a warning if you have already bought it - I have been thankful for that feature too.








How do you organise your books?

Do you still like to have real books and enjoy turning the pages?

Or are you a Kindle devotee?

  




A to Z of Organising our Home!


A little Round-up of things we say, do or use during the organising and housework in our home.









A  -  Accidental Reducing of Articles 

The times when you accidentally break some plates or mugs and they just have to be thrown out.

Funny how I used to be annoyed; now unless it is something special, I just think

 "that's another one of my 365 items to be decluttered in 365 Days"   -   smiley face.







B  -  Beautiful Clearouts

When you get rid of those items in the wardrobes that were there because you had paid money for them and thought you should get the most time out of them but really thought that you didn't look good in them or the wife thought the husband didn't look good in them and he hadn't realised it yet.



C  -  Careful Clearouts

Those times when you are supposed to empty out a cupboard and sort everything out and then return only some of the things but in reality you return all but maybe one!

Now I would never do that!!!!



D  -  To the Dump!

A good phrase in our house because it means something is going out of the house, garage or garden and it is more than can fit in the bin.







E  -  Easier Housework.

Yes there really are some things that help me along the way.

I use them for many, many tasks because anything that makes the work easier and done more quickly is a bonus for me.



F  -  Fred????

There are so many sentences that begin with this word when it comes to the organising of our home and mostly the answer is

"I don't know!!!!!"




G  -  Garden Shed Sort out.

Well in our case it was a bit more than that - Plus we made a video.







H  -  Helping each other?


Where is it?

I don't know.

But you had it last.

No, You had it last.

No I didn't.

Yes you did.

Well where did I have it?

I don't remember.





I  -  Inside & Not on Top of!

You know when you have designated a good drawer or container for an item and the husband comes along and just sets it down on top of the container, or the kitchen worktop.

Enough said!







J  -  Just a Little Time before Bed

That's the time I keep saying I will just do a little tidy up in the bedroom and Fred just laughs - well he has known me for all these years.



K  -  Kitchen Organising

The one place I do like to seriously think about before I move into a house and designate areas to specific tasks.

The Tea & Coffee corner being the top priority of course.






L  -  Leave me some space to sit down!

The words I have often heard when in the middle of sorting out something and I have cluttered up the entire room.

There was an entire table covered as well as the couch.






M  -  The "Man Drawer"

Yes I wrote about that last year, there is one in our kitchen but still his "things" end up in other strange places.  Plus I'm always asking the question "What is that thing?" about most of the things in the drawer.



N  -  Nowhere to put it?

That is definitely not what you hear in our house!

More like - I know I had decided where those were to go but I've forgotten again.



A to Z of Organising in our home? well trying to not fail at organising!




O  -  Opening the Post

Should mean exactly that - you open it and deal with it.
You know - throw it out, respond to it, or file it away for future reference.

In our house it gets opened and looked at and then put back in the envelope!!!



P  -  A "Place for Everything"

Yes I wrote about this one before too.





And we really will get there one day, I'm sure.
Well pretty sure.
Well really hoping!



Q  -  Quite a Productive Day

This is how I feel when I have managed to actually get more than half of my day's ToDo List completed.



R  -  Remembering.

Okay I know that certain people on reading this will just laugh and say:
Some hope!

Yes I may be always saying I forget things but I do have a few things that I need to remember when cleaning the house and not just the fact that having a coffee does not get the house cleaned.







S  -  Spread the work on Spreadsheets.

I have my Organising and Cleaning Schedule for the year on a Spreadsheet.




Fred & I both love Spreadsheets.

Trouble is I could easily get distracted away from the organising of the house once I get on the spreadsheet because it is on the computer.



T  -  Take Time for the Tedious Things Before the Coffee.

The thing we hate to do but often gives us the most sense of satisfaction when we actually get round to it is one of those tedious things that just have to be done but I can always think of another word -

procrastination and it goes well with coffee.







U  -  Unusual Uses for Simple Products.

There are things around our homes that don't only have to be used for one purpose.

We need to be a bit more imaginative and find other uses for them.
Which can actually be more interesting than using them!








V  -  Very Good Ideas

Unfortunately those are the ones that I have when I am in the middle of doing something else, or just about to fall asleep and I'm sure I will remember them because they are so good but then I have forgotten them the very next day or hour or even in 5 minutes time.




W  -   Do Without It?

The Housework?          Yes! Please!

But what about those things in the Kitchen that you just feel you can't do without.

They may be small but they are so useful.







X  -  Xtra Special Days 

The times when you get away from the house for a really enjoyable time and are completely refreshed and ready to tackle the house again.

Those breaks are xtra important in the better weather because the sun is tempting you, or in the cold dark weather when you need something to brighten up your day, or just any time because you can always find some excuse.







Y  -  YOU didn't put it away AGAIN!

Those times when we get fed up because something is not in the place we actually do have allotted for it because neither of us have put it away yet again.

How will we ever be organised?



Z  -  ZZZZZ when it's all done.

Or when we are just too tired to do any more.

Just kidding with this one because it is never done and I would claim to be tired at any time to get out of the housework and on to the funwork.



But there is always




to keep me going.







Do you have any great ideas to add that just keep your house organised or are you more disorganised like me?