TBU Episode 53 - Kids' Book Organisation [00:00:00] [00:00:02] Rowena: Hello, Two Booked Up friends. I'm Rowena Mabbott, one of your hosts here on the Two Booked Up Podcast. And today we're going to continue the discussion that we started in our last episode. about organising the books in your home. [00:00:16] But now we're moving from our own books to possibly the more difficult area of organising your kids books. But it just so happens that my co host, Shelley Tonkin Smith, has become a bit of an expert in this field. As a homeschooling mum, her home is full of books of all kinds. Isn't that right, Shelley? [00:00:35] Shelley: Ha. Yes. Guilty as charged Rowena and happily. So, books are a major part of our homeschooling approach, so I've really had to get smart with organizing our books. But I will say that there will be something in this episode for everyone, whether you are homeschooling or not, or even if you don't have kids in your home. [00:00:56] , because as with our last episode, episode 49, we're going to be using Kendra Adachi's Lazy Genius process from the Lazy Genius Kitchen. And this is such a practical process that I'd venture to say anyone could apply to tackling any project. [00:01:11] Rowena: Absolutely. So the steps as a refresher are prioritise, essentialise, organise, personalise, and then systemise. So we're going to share how we're applying these steps in our respective homes and contexts. And just for a bit of quick background, I've got two boys in high school and Shelley's two boys are primary school age. [00:01:31] I'm in Sydney, Australia, and Shelley is Johannesburg in South Africa. We've got different styles. Different homes and very different priorities. But we're both applying this process and you can make it your own too. [00:01:43] Shelley: Yes, this is why we enjoy the Lazy Genius process, because it allows for individual choice based on what matters to you. So let's see how you can organize your kids books in a way that feels perfect for you. Stay tuned for lots of inspiration. [00:02:00] Welcome to Two Booked Up, I'm Shelley Tonkin Smith. [00:02:08] Rowena: And I'm Rowena Mabbott. We're two well read best friends. [00:02:12] Shelley: And now you are an honorary member of our book club. We're going to fast forward you to the mind blown and mic drop parts of those business and personal development books that are probably on your must read list. [00:02:25] Rowena: Because as busy, multi passionate working parents, we know how hard it is to find time to read. But we also know how much you love learning, growing and making a difference in the world. [00:02:36] Shelley: So treat yourself to a bit of bookish conversation, whether you've read the book or not. [00:02:42] Rowena: With your two friends on Two Booked Up. [00:02:44] [00:02:49] Shelley: All right, so as we said, we are going to be using Kendra Adachi's Lazy Genius Process. We've used the Lazy Genius Kitchen as our kind of guidebook for this process of getting your kids books organized in your house. But before we get into our show today, I just wanted to say that after we recorded this show, I discovered that Kendra on her amazing Lazy Genius Podcast has an episode, called How to Help Kids Clean Their Room. So if what we are saying here resonates and you want to hear more lazy genius ideas of getting organized specifically in that realm of your kids, it is an excellent episode that I'd highly recommend. So I will leave a link in the show notes to you. Episode 379 of the Lazy Genius Podcast, how to help kids clean their room in our show notes for Two Booked Up today. [00:03:44] But now we're going to get on with the show and actually use Kendra's Lazy Genius process to get our kids books prioritized and organized and systemized and all the great things that we want to see in our homes and with our kids and their reading lives. [00:04:01] Step 1: Prioritize [00:04:01] Shelley: All right, so The first step of the Lazy Genius process is to prioritise, which means we are going to name what matters. So we're going to name what matters about your kids books in your home. So this time there are three aspects we need to think about. We need to think about books, and yeah, we're probably thinking mostly physical copies. [00:04:23] We need to think about your kids and we need to think about your home. So Rowena, I think you go first this time. What matters to you when it comes to your kids and their books in your home? And just maybe even more broadly about your kids and their reading lives. And again, we'll try and limit ourselves to five top priorities. [00:04:45] Rowena: Okay, . So number one, I want my kids to have ready access to books. So they each have an enormous bookshelf in their bedroom. , so each child has their own room and each child has a huge bookshelf. I do also want to support my boys to be readers and to identify themselves as such. And so I want them to read both fiction and nonfiction, and I want them to feel that being a reader is a core part of their identity. [00:05:09] I also give my kids ownership of their books. That includes their bookshelves and their spaces. Now honestly that means they have heaps of books. So my only nod to my minimalist preferences is the books need to mostly fit on the large bookshelf. Now my boys also have very different interests and so I want to encourage their preferences with their books. [00:05:31] My youngest loves nonfiction books whereas my eldest son reads more fiction. And then finally, my fifth one is we have and foster a culture of reading. So books are allowed at the breakfast table and at weekend lunchtimes. So we encourage them to read a book rather than picking up their phone. And we do that. [00:05:51] My husband and I do that as well. And the kids do that. But the only time we say absolutely no books at the table is dinner time, because that's when we have conversation and connect instead. So how about you, Shelley? How does the prioritise step show up in your house? [00:06:03] Shelley: Cool. Well, those sound like really great priorities, Ro. , yeah, for me, I agree that I want my kids to feel that they can call themselves readers. So that, that idea of to identify as readers, that's also very important to me my second one is that I want, like with myself, I want my kids to read for pleasure and to be able to pick up a book, not because they have to do it for school, but because they want to just read for fun. [00:06:32] But then having said that, number three is that with us homeschooling, I want my kids to get a lot of their curricular and kind of school knowledge from the books that they read. And I'm talking fiction and non fiction here. Or at least that their learning starts in a book. Like that's just Lights me up completely. [00:06:53] So not just textbooks that they're reading and like studying from but, but this idea, there's an idea in classical homeschooling, this idea of living books. Books that have been written like as fiction books, that's great. Classics or books that have been written on a specific topic rather than this kind of curated textbook all the time. [00:07:13] So that's kind of part of my homeschooling philosophy. And then my fourth priority when it comes to kids and their books is I want to be this bookish auntie in my community I just really want to share the love of reading, not just with my own kids, but with the other kids that we co op with in our homeschooling community. [00:07:37] I want to be able to lend books. I want to be able to recommend books to those kids. And there's nothing, I love more than hearing my own kids recommending a book to their friends. So yes, I, I want to foster that on a broader level. That's kind of important to me as it comes to kids and books. And then, yeah, I like that idea of the culture of reading in your house. [00:08:01] I call it our family book club and have that like family book club culture in our home. I want to connect with kids over books. Like you say, at mealtimes, chat about the books that we're reading. Also to read aloud together is very much a big part of my family life. And yeah, so just have that, that culture of reading in the home is also an important one for me. [00:08:27] So I think there's quite a few. places where we're aligned there, Ro, of what's important for us, for our kids. But yeah, listeners, think about what's important for you and your kids and their books. And, like, while I'd encourage you to keep the small and You know, manageable. Think about what you want for their reading lives more broadly as well. [00:08:49] So the questions you could ask is, what matters to your kids themselves about their books? A lot of kids are going to have opinions about their books. And, and listen to those. That's really important. And then I think you could consider things like, is it important to you that your kids support your local library? [00:09:08] You could ask questions like, how do you feel about books that your kids have outgrown? Is it important to you to keep those books, all of those books? Maybe, you know, you keep some of them. And then what matters when it comes to school books and keeping those books organized. And then you can ask some similar questions from our last episode, where we were organizing our own books. But think about your whole household, you know, so what's important to you about the aesthetics of your home and how it looks, you know, are you cool with having your kids just strewn books all over the place? [00:09:39] Or, or do you want things a little bit more squared away? , what's important to you about, , The space that you have in your home. Realistically, how much space do you have to play around with when it comes to books? And just overall, what's important to you when it comes to your kids and their books and their reading life in general? [00:09:59] You can go and have a think about all of those things and get clear on that before you start getting to the next step in the process. But I think this is a good time to move on to the next step in the process. Rowena, can you introduce us to it? [00:10:12] Essentialise [00:10:12] Rowena: So the next step is to essentialize. So once we've prioritized, we can essentialize. And that really means remove what's in the way. So when we think about kids and reading, perhaps we need to remove the things that stop them from reading. But also, that can also be streamlining it to make it easy for them to read. [00:10:31] So for me, I like to give my boys complete reign, and I have done, over their books and their book selections. So in terms of my older boy, who's 17 and in his final year of high school, he has chosen to edit down his books to just those he loves and will want to reread or he wants to lend to his friends. [00:10:50] So he has, I've noticed recently, he's been lending a few different books to his friends, which I think is terrific. , in terms of essentializing, I've also put baby books and that's really going right back to like even favorite board books that were gifts from loved ones. And I've put them in a separate cupboard in the playroom. [00:11:06] So my kids have a playroom, which is also sometimes called the Lego room. So those books, yeah, it's mostly used by my youngest and it is mostly absolutely covered with Lego and little army people. My older boy doesn't use it except for sleepovers. And then the younger one has to move all of his Lego, which comes with a lot of complaining. So. The board books and some of those other really favorite books that they've well and truly outgrown, but we didn't want to get rid of them yet. They're accessible because they are just in a cupboard, but they're not in line of sight. So other picture books which perhaps were not. Favorites or weren't ones that we really felt passionately about, we've donated to friends with younger children, or we took them to the local Little Street Library where we popped them in there for other local kids to read. Now there are select picture books and large coffee table books, and we do have quite a lot of those in my youngest son's room because he absolutely adores them. [00:12:01] But in order to essentialize them, the guideline is it has to fit within two shelves of his bookcase. So he's got a very high bookcase where there's a shelf that's quite big because these coffee table books are fairly hefty. Some of them can be, you know, nearly 40 or 50 centimeters tall. So they're very large books, but , they have to fit in the bookcase, but I did notice today when I did a little bit of scouting around to get ideas for this episode, both my kids have started stacking books on the floor near the bookcase rather than in the bookcase. [00:12:36] And I think that might be a sign that either they're a bit lazy or more accurately, the bookcases are perhaps getting a bit full. So there might be some more essentializing in our future, perhaps this weekend. Yes. And. I think there's one more step for essential aid in my house, which is boundaries around audiobooks. [00:12:55] They are a vacation treat. So my eldest will listen to music when we go on a long drive, whereas my youngest will very happily listen to an audiobook. But otherwise, neither boy reads on a device. [00:13:06] They would much prefer to read an actual paper book. So how about you Shelley? Given what matters to you about your kids books and their reading lives, what have you removed or what could you remove or essentialise? [00:13:18] Shelley: I'm going to start off with, removing the books that, you know, that don't matter. So, , in terms of essentializing, I have donated the boys baby books and like the real baby books. , but I find that they that we don't really want to part with most of their picture books because at this age they're 10 and 7, so the picture books are still useful and it's important me to be that library, that auntie, , and lend them out to our friends. [00:13:45] So, I think at this point we're okay with keeping A lot of our books. However, I think my essentializing step has more to do with mindsets than with the physical books. So I've had to let go of Heavy academic expectations when it comes to books. [00:14:04] So I don't set my kids like book reports or, and I don't set them required reading. There's ways that I like bring that in. , I use. And I've also been reading some of the books, tools like The Brave Writer by Julie Bogart. She's got some great ways of literature study that feel in that family book club kind of vibe. [00:14:25] , and I've wanted to keep reading very much as like a pleasurable activity for my kids. So I've like, Set aside these like heavy academic expectations that I've had in my head. So that's been like a more of a mindset essentializing thing. , and yeah, interesting what you say about audiobooks. So I have very much a developing reader, they, you would call it. [00:14:49] , so when it comes to reading with his eyes, , it's, just not very pleasurable for him to read with the, and I'm talking about the mechanics of actually reading letters on a page. It's hard for him. So, I've let go of the idea that reading is only happening on a physical book and reading with your eyes. [00:15:08] And I've gone like carte blanche with he, with audio books for him. He adores listening to his audio books, but obviously, you know, that means a screen device. And so, yes, we've also had to do some essentializing and limiting and setting those boundaries when it comes to games and other temptations that are then on that device. [00:15:28] But honestly, I found with my son, Midday is his audible time. And he's totally cool with that. And he does honor that. But but he'll tell me about all the audio books that he's reading. So yeah, so I think that those are some of the things that I've removed, but they're more like figurative kind of mindsets kind of things. [00:15:48] Rowena: I think that's really important and it's also acknowledging that every child is different and what works in some households won't work in others and vice versa, but specifically that every child is unique and we find a way to make reading pleasurable for them no matter what format it takes. So listeners, where could you essentialize or remove what's in the way of what matters to you when it comes to your kids books and your kids reading? [00:16:11] Essentialising could involve donating books that your kids have grown out of to make space for new books. But also remember, there's no right or wrong here. It's just what matters to you and your kids and then removing anything that's getting in the way of that. [00:16:23] Step 3: Organise [00:16:23] Rowena: I think now it's the most fun step, isn't it? [00:16:25] We get to organise! So now Aunty Shelley, the librarian, I suspect you have a lot to share here. [00:16:33] Shelley: Oh, yes, of course I do. Yeah. So this is where we organize and we put everything in its place. So for me, that place is my main big bookshelf. It's got nine, like kind of square shelves and also nice and tall. , and that's in our music room slash library. , books, by the way, are also really great for organizing. [00:16:54] for managing sound and bouncy sound with when it comes to music. So it works out perfectly that we have what I think we're going to call the conservatory as our Lego [00:17:03] Rowena: love it. [00:17:06] Shelley: But yes, those shelves are great. Cause there's these nine shelves there. I can nicely organize them into like picture book biographies and I've bought some really beautiful ones that I've imported from the U S. [00:17:17] , I've also got a set of, Section for Graphic Novels and then other picture books that I've bought here in South Africa, lots of Julia Donaldson's, [00:17:26] Rowena: Same here. We have lots of Julia Donaldson's and we have a lot of board books of hers as well. And they're, they're the ones in the playroom cupboard. We've kept those cause they're so beautiful. [00:17:35] Shelley: writes brilliantly. She's, she's a talent of notes. , yeah. And then, , the, the bottom shelves are like the nonfiction shelves that, coming back to my curricular stuff that, that I need the boys to have, we've got And I've organized those in like loose subjects, like history, geography, animals and biology. [00:17:55] And then this is where we go if we need that curricular information. And, and I do try and encourage the boys not to always Google everything. Like, let's go and find it from a book because there are often really beautiful pictures and well researched information in some of these DK books. [00:18:11] Then I've got another smaller shelf, , for, in, in that conservatory , for chapter books, reference books, and there's a couple of biographies that we've got there too. And then what I've also done in the spirit of what I have in my office, my book stand, To feature a book is I've put a little book shelf on the wall and that I use for a featured book. [00:18:37] So just a book that I want to like attract attention to. And I put that book face out, you know, because you can see the spines of books, but then like for kids, The magic is often in the, in the cover of the book. So I've put that on the shelf on the wall, face out, and there's space for about four or five of those books on the two shelves that I've got there. [00:18:57] then I also have a, You get these like fabric boxes , with hard reinforcing, again, to like advertise, , you see, I'm a copywriter, so even when it comes to my children's books, but I advertise those books and I put them in a way that they can kind of file through them in this fabric box. And, , often it's the new books that I've, I've just bought and that's on a little table in the lounge and yeah, just encouraging those kids to see the new books and making it easy to file through them and pick one up. And then also in the lounge is our Read Aloud book that we generally like read chapter by chapter. We've for a long time now had Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix has been, and that just sits like kind of in the coffee table, ready for us to sit on the couch and, and I'll read that book aloud to them. [00:19:47] And then like you, each of my kids have their own bookshelf in each of their rooms. We do bedtime stories every night, my husband and I alternate reading a longer chapter book and, and this is my opportunity to stretch their taste, because I'm now reading the book to them. And so I can choose a book that's maybe just a little bit outside of their taste, the book that I mentioned last week, Sweep , a story of a girl and her monster, , was one of those. [00:20:18] But yeah, I will say everyone that in my home, it's a little bit of all day. Organized chaos when it comes to organizing the books in my house. It's certainly not perfect and it's certainly not minimalist, Rowena. and so just permission to everyone listening, you just want a basic level of organization that you can then keep up in the last step of systemizing. [00:20:42] But before we get there, I want to hear from you, Ro, because now your boys are older, they're at school, and so how do you handle book organization with them? [00:20:51] Rowena: Ah, yes. So look, honestly, my kids are teenagers and the bookshelves in their room are their domain. I don't go in and touch them for the most [00:21:00] Shelley: Yeah, other than you're a drive by check. [00:21:02] Rowena: Yeah, just okay, which was just done today in order to get some, you know, content for this episode. My older boy has his own approach, which is generally he groups authors together. [00:21:12] So if he's got every book in a series by a particular author, he places them together on his bookshelf. My youngest, on the other hand, Does have a few of those where I've arranged them, but generally he just shoves things in wherever they fit, or he leaves them on the floor, or in or under his bed, or on the stairs, or on the dining table, or wherever he just stopped reading it. [00:21:32] , so he's not particularly Good at putting things away that said, the books that do make it back onto his shelf do tend to be organized into fiction and nonfiction. So the fiction books that make it back onto his shelf are grouped by series and by author. So for example, all the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books are together and in numbered orders, same with the Treehouse series. They're all together and he's got a few different series of books that he likes to read and he wants to collecting them for a while. Now, a lot of these books are too young for him because he's 14 now, but he loves them. So they stay. So that's part of his choice about him having ownership. [00:22:08] Now for my younger boy, nonfiction is grouped by type and size. So all of his Lonely Planet books are together. And then the two shelves that he's got for nonfiction books are in size order two. Now, as I mentioned earlier, this is especially important because he loves reading massive coffee table books, particularly about military or aircraft history. [00:22:28] We don't really know where he gets that from. That's very much his personal taste. But because they're such huge books, they need to be housed safely. And because they're quite valuable books, I do insist that they go back onto the bookshelf. School books are another thing. Now, my kids are both at high school and they do tend to have books that they bring home from school. My older boy tends to store his school books on his desk or very close by. He also has a shelf on his bookcase that he's dedicated to school related books and documents. [00:22:55] He's quite organized like that. The younger one, honestly, he just keeps his school books in his school bag. He doesn't bother taking them out which minimises the chance that he'll forget them. Um, , now one thing we used to do for organising, which we don't do anymore, we used to have a basket in the playroom for physical books that we borrowed from the library because at that stage we went every single week and we borrowed at least a dozen books each time, basically to keep up with my older boys voracious reading. [00:23:20] , however, after the COVID lockdowns and as they got older, we no longer borrow so many books. , that said, the basket was an excellent system, as it made finding the books to be returned to the library much easier. And Shelley, as you pointed out, they were visible. They were just sitting there, and if they were looking for a book, they could go and grab one. [00:23:37] It was very, very easy for them. And finally, each of my boys has the library app. They don't have as many as I do, but they have the primary library apps. The older one uses it very rarely and really only for digital access to books or papers that he needs for school assignments. The younger one, uses it when reminded to download an audio book for an upcoming travel day. [00:23:57] Shelley: Okay, cool, cool. So listeners, there's a few of Rowena and my organization tips, given our priorities and given what we've essentialized or not essentialized. , so remember, just keep going back before you make those big organizing decisions or before you find yourself like, buying a bookshelf that you might not need or feeling overwhelmed about all of this, go back to those priorities of yours , and yeah, cause almost like, maybe unlike me, you don't want to turn your house into a library and you've got more essentializing to do when it comes to your kids books. [00:24:33] Step 4: Personalise [00:24:33] Shelley: But, Now it is time for that fourth step in the process. [00:24:36] This is the personalized step of bringing your own kids taste into the book choice process and the book organization process. So in the personalized step, this is all about feeling like yourself. So this is where your kids get to make their books and their book collections feel like their own. [00:24:54] And of course, because it's your home, you'll likely get a bit of say in their personalising here too. Honestly, for me, I am a real pushover when my kids ask me if they can buy a book at Exclusive Books or another bookstore. It's pretty much always a yes. I've also encouraged my kids to choose their own books. [00:25:16] So you're talking about Diary of a Wimpy Kid, , My Boy's Captain Underpants, like went through a major Captain Underpants phase, which has luckily, luckily stopped, but they now are doing Two Tigers Take Turns Tasting Tapioca, which is from Captain Underpants. All good. It's, it's spreading the joy of reading and allowing them to choose their own books. [00:25:38] And don't worry, their tastes will improve as they get older, I think, hey, Ro? [00:25:44] Rowena: Absolutely. They do eventually get there. I, I built, my older one's there, the younger one, yeah. Jury's still out. [00:25:53] Shelley: Yeah, so I think that for me is where, where Read Aloud comes in, is then to like, broaden their taste in literature and, and helping them develop that, shall we say more broader taste in literature. Yeah, like, for me, it's been very important. Just to give them each their own bookshelf and like, maybe you can't give your kid a whole bookshelf, or maybe they don't have their own room, but even like one of those like little box cubbies, you could put that, that they can have a place to store their books and make books special. [00:26:25] And I will tell you Rowena, in terms of personalization, my older child recently color coded his books. I went in there after Audible time and saw that he'd reorganize all the print copies of books in a beautiful rainbow. So you'd be very proud. [00:26:40] Rowena: I am so proud of him. [00:26:44] Shelley: Yeah, but also this idea of having a family book club culture, , as one of my priorities. It's about putting our own spin on that and personalizing that and going, okay, well, let's choose some food. What food do you want to choose that links to this book? Or, do you want to go to a place? about a book that you've read and bringing the kids in there so they have more ownership and personalization and individualization over, their book choices. [00:27:10] Rowena: well like you, I let both my boys choose what they want to read when they want to read it. I don't mind as long as they're reading. Even if it does mean my youngest is reading the Treehouse series for the billionth time. [00:27:23] , yes. And yes, they also have their own huge bookshelves without too much pressure from me to keep it organized in a certain way. [00:27:30] Although I do prefer books not to be stored on the floor, I respect that it is their space and I am, let's say, learning to let go of that particular preference that books stay on the bookshelf. , and the other thing for years, every school holiday, we'd head into the city to the big bookstore in town and each boy could choose a book to buy. Now I haven't done that so much recently, instead what I've been doing more recently is purchasing something online that I think they'll like and then. Surprising them with that at the beginning of school holidays. So they've got something to read. [00:28:03] Shelley: Oh, that's fun. I love just bringing books as, people love books and I think kids love books and I think they love to be asked and when they are asked and their opinions are valued, then you can have this bookish conversation. It's just, I love it so much. [00:28:19] Step 5: Systemise [00:28:19] Shelley: So it's time now just to keep everything in the flow and that is our final step, systemize. And. We've gotten organized, we've personalized it, and now we just want to make sure, in general, it stays that way. And so we do that by creating some systems. So I mentioned in last time's episode that I use the app called Library Thing to just catalog all the books that I own. So I, at the moment, I've just mixed the kids books and my books. [00:28:48] I scan the barcode when I buy a book, or even borrow a book to keep track of that. And then Yeah, it's, it's so fun to just scan the barcode with your phone. It gives you a nice beep and that helps me to systemize all the books in my house. And I am trying to get my boys to follow my system, but I I will be honest, I'm not always the best role model when it comes to systemizing. [00:29:15] So I think for, for those kinds of people who are my people, I think a catch all place for books is a good solution. So like you talked about the book basket for your library books and just like a basket or a container for any books that don't, you don't know where to file or you don't know where to pack away. [00:29:34] They can just get. Put into those baskets and then, then go and put them in their right place rather than like, you know, then having books in random places. And then you were like, where was that book? , so that's just a little tip to help you stay in the flow. I also have a little bit of a system for lending books because I love lending books but I do sometimes want those books back so I put a sticker in the front of those books with my email address on it and then people can remember, oh yes, this is Shelley's book and it must come back to her. [00:30:02] I probably could do with a bit of a better system on my end of just like keeping track of who I've lent. And then, those borrowed books from the library or from friends go in a denim bag that hangs on a hook at the door. And then they just go from there so that they don't get mixed in with our books. [00:30:18] , how do you stay in the flow and set up systems in your home, Rowena? [00:30:23] Rowena: Well, I actually don't think there is a system, [00:30:27] Shelley: don't believe [00:30:27] you. [00:30:28] Rowena: the kids books. No. Okay. So that for the kids books, for me, as I said in the, in our other episode, my books are very organized. Everybody else's is a little bit more, um,, Fluid, shall we say. So there might be a system, but perhaps it's not overt. [00:30:44] That said, I think perhaps the overarching system for keeping all the books organised is that they need to fit within the boundaries of the existing bookcases. So for the kids, that's the bookcases in their bedrooms. For my husband, it's the large number of cupboards that he's taken over in the lounge room. [00:31:01] So for our family, physical boundaries seem to be the easiest way for all of us to manage our book organization. So we've got a space and if it can fit in that space, then you can keep it. If it's more than fits in the space, then we need to go back to that prioritizing and essentializing step. [00:31:18] Shelley: And that's the system, you know, then the system kind of manages itself and it stays in the flow and you're like, wait a minute, we have a stop in the flow. The bookshelf is full. Let's start doing some essentializing or reprioritizing. well, Ro, that has been so fun to chat about kids books. [00:31:35] And with that, we're going to wrap things up for today on Two Booked Up. We have so enjoyed applying Kendra Adachi's Lazy Genius process and I highly recommend the Lazy Genius Kitchen but as you've heard here, the principles that she gives you in the book can be applied to any area of your home and I would actually say it can be applied to many areas of your life in general as well. So just to remind you, those five steps of the Lazy Genius process are prioritise, very important, essentialise, remove what's in the way, then organise, put everything in its place, then personalise, Make it Feel Like Yourself, and finally, Systematize, Stay in the Flow. [00:32:23] So we'll leave a link to the Lazy Genius Kitchen by Kendra Adachi in our show notes. Highly recommended book that you can go and get two booked up with and organize your books too. [00:32:34] Let's go and choose our own adventure. Listeners, you've got two options after today. My first suggestion that you could choose is to find a book that you want your kids to read and then go and casually make it visible. So maybe it's on a shelf or maybe just strewn on the kitchen table, like often the more random the better, and see if they take the bait, see if they pick that up and start reading it. And your second option would be to name what matters to you about your kids books and their reading life. So this is a bigger one, but Then go and chat to them about it. [00:33:13] And I was going to say if they're older, you know, chat to them about it if they're older, but no matter what their age, talk about books, talk about reading and talk about how important it is that they can call themselves a reader, you know, , and just listen and see how could you bring to reality. [00:33:31] At least just one of those things that matter, that come out of your discussions and your thinking on what matters about your kids books and their reading life. So that's that first step, prioritize. Okay. We're going to wrap things up there, but not before Rowena tells us what she's reading at the moment. [00:33:50] Rowena: Okay. So I'm currently listening to Catching Teller Crow by Amblin and Ezekiel Kumamalina, which is read by Miranda Tapsell. Now it's in keeping with today's episode because it is a YA or young adult novel written by Indigenous siblings, Amblin and Ezekiel. It's a hybrid story, so it's mixing prose and verse, and it combines thriller, ghost story, and crime story, while dealing with themes of grief, colonial history, violence, love, and family. [00:34:19] So there is a lot in there, but it's a very different book for me. But I have to say, I'm really enjoying it. And listening to Miranda Tapsell, who's one of our best known actors, and she's an author herself, and she's a producer. She is just brilliant. So yeah, definitely enjoying [00:34:34] Shelley: That sounds very special, Ro. That sounds like a really great listen slash read. , and. We're going to take the conversation on to LinkedIn and all the other channels. You can follow me on LinkedIn, I am Shelley Tonkin Smith over there, and let's talk about Book organization, what do you do for your kids? [00:34:53] What do you do for yourself? You can also go and learn more about my copywriting services and resources for online service providers and educators, that's over at shellysmithcreative. com. And Rowena, where can our listeners find you? [00:35:08] Rowena: You can find me at Rowena Mabbott on Instagram and also Rowena Mabbott on LinkedIn, or visit rowenamabbott. com for information about my coaching services and my books. [00:35:20] Shelley: And of course, remember to visit two book up.com for show notes and to download that 24 for 2024. Reading challenge PDF checklist for free [00:35:31] Rowena: I'm Rowena Mabbott, and I'm going to leave a copy of my novel, Avoiding the Friend Zone, on our dining table and see if either of my boys take the bait. But I wish you way more luck than I'm likely to get. [00:35:42] Shelley: And I'm Shelley Tonkin Smith. We will see you in two weeks time for another episode of Two Booked Up.