Organising children's books
Our kids love having stories read to them, so we have lots of books stored throughout the house, including the bedrooms, living room and studio. My son has a great big bookcase in his room for all his stories, which is a great storage piece. Here's how I categorized and organised the books on these shelves.
Although the bookshelf is a great storage piece because it can hold a lot, the negative of having so much space was that having so many books on each shelf meant it wasn’t easy for Lucas to easily flip through and find what he was looking for. We found he was choosing the same story over and over, often just because it was the easiest to grab at the end of the stack.
This is what the bookcase looked like last year with the new bookends my husband made. Since then, we've added quite a few more books, so the shelves were getting pretty full.
I decided to separate the books out and use the bookend dividers, and some pet rocks that my son made with his Aunty, to categorise and create small 'groups' of books. This would make it easier for him to discover new stories and quickly and easily find what he was looking for.
In some sections, I grouped the books by type (‘Golden books’ or Disney-themed), or by author (Shirley Hughes, Pamela Allen, Julia Donaldson)....
While other sections were based on the size of the book...
Or a 'series' (e.g. Disney, Dinosaurs).
The upper shelf holds 2 sets of blocks, while the top shelf has special photos and memories.
Not sure how long it will remain looking like this (!) but at least things are easy enough to reorganise with everything now in organised sections.
This side of the room is looking great now with the art display and gallery wall. We have some plans for switching things up in this room soon, but the bookshelf can easily be moved around and it will remain organised!