The picture on the left is what our bookshelf in the playroom looked like when we first moved in last year. Over the year we have added A LOT more books to our collection, and the kids have started climbing and pulling all of the books down when they want one. So the picture on the right is what our playroom normally looks like. I LOVE books. I am an avid reader and usually have 2-4 books on the go at once (some work related some for fun), but I read all the time. I never want to limit my kids on how many books they can have, but this was getting out of control.
So after the girls were in bed tonight I brought all of their books out (well the ones I could find I am sure there are random books in their rooms and the van), and organized them into piles. I put all of our Christmas books into one pile, all of our Bible books into another, board books went together and so on and so forth.
From these organized piles I separated them into 10 piles of 13 books each. Each pile had books from all of the piles above (except Christmas those are being kept together in a whole other bag). I did end up making a pile of books to sell/donate that were either duplicates or just ones that we don’t really read or I don’t really like.
I picked up eleven .99 cent reusable bags from the store and put a pile into each bag (Christmas being the eleventh bag). They will have one bag of books a week, and at the end of the week we will swap it for a new bag. Not only will this help cut down on mess it will also help with actually reading all of the books we own instead of the same 5 that I feel we read all the time now.
I hope this helps someone else out in organizing their kids books. And now I have to figure out where to store the other 10 bags that are not currently out.
