Organizing Kids’ Books
We are a book family. We’ve been reading to our kids ever since they were born, and its always been a part of our nightly bedtime routine. They’ve developed a tremendous love for books. Just last night, my second grader bought a new book from his school book fair, and finished it before bed. Although we had to pull his nose out to get him to shower and put his pajamas on, we marvel at his hunger for reading!
Needless to say, we have a lot of children’s books. And we read most if not all of them! So how do I store all of our books, and make it easy for the kids to select what they want to read (or want us to read to them)?
I keep just a few out at a time:
I think that children have an easier time making a decision if they have LESS choices. This can apply to any area, but I want to talk about books. We used to have ALL the books our kids owned crammed in shelves with only the spines showing. Every night, our little ones would gravitate towards the same 2 or 3 books (though there were 50 others to choose from!). I decided to enact the same principle that I use with toys. Go here to read my post on toy switching.
My husband built nifty wall shelves for both boy rooms. When I came across the idea, I really liked the look and it seemed they would not only work well but save space.
Here are the shelves in my oldest boys’ room. They have a “pirate theme” going on and I will share pictures of how I redecorated their room after Christmas (as right now they have ugly (but fun) color icicle lights strung on their walls).
We have a variety of seasonal books, and they are so much fun to read! For this season, we pulled out all the winter/Christmas books. They look forward to getting these out every year, and we sometimes add a couple more to the collection.
Okay, so I know what you’re thinking. “That’s nice, Melissa. But where do you store all the rest of the books?” I have an answer for that!
In one room I store them in under the bed storage boxes
And in the other room, I store them in boxes on the closet shelves (along with toys). I worked with the situations/space I had in each of the rooms.
Also, you do not have to have wall shelves or any type of special shelves to rotate books! You can do this on whatever shelving unit/book storage you own. Below is how I organize them on our cube shelves in the playroom:
It can work in baskets on the floor if that’s how you store books. Just keep the principle in mind: less choices = easier decision-making for children.
How do you store books? I always love hearing your feedback!
Melissa
Get Organized. Simply Live.