I am so grateful that both my children love books. We have read to both our little bookworms from day dot and it is exciting to watch my oldest child now happily looking through his favourite books independently (and giving mum 5 minutes of peace!). I love doing bedtime stories and having that special connecting times... even if we do go through phases of reading the same book on repeat!
To foster this love for reading, my goal has been for the kids to have easy access to books in the different areas of the house they spend time in. This meant we needed the right storage solutions so there weren't piles of books lying around the house. Here's a look at some of the storage options we use.
First up is the living room. My 15-month old daughter is still learning to turn pages, and is pretty rough with books (especially the pop-up kind!), so we provide mainly board books/hard covers for her. Most of her larger books are on an easily accessible shelf on the living room bookcase.
BONUS: Want some ideas for the different categories for organising kids' books? Click on the button below for your free checklist!
The books are not in any special order, just stacked in a way that makes them easy to pack up quickly at the end of the day. I recently purchased 2 small woven basket from Target. In one of the baskets I placed a variety of small board books that Baby Girl can tear her way through. She likes to repeatedly open and shut the lid of the box too, so it is the perfect toy! :)
Some of the other books we own are an awkward size and height so I just popped them all into an open basket on the top shelf. As you can see, we have 3 of these baskets to separate out the kid's toys.
I like to have things in containers and baskets so the visual clutter in our living room is kept to a minimum, but there is still easy access to plenty of toys.
Another place we store books is at my 3 year old son’s little crafting table near the kitchen. I got this wall newspaper rack from Ikea and it is ideal for holding random books, such as colouring books, sticker books and scrapbooks for practising letters or drawing.
Moving onto the kid’s bedrooms…. My son has a large bookshelf in his room with 3 spacious shelves. For now these shelves mainly hold books but I picture the space possibly filling up with crafty things he will make at kinder next year. Plus it is a good spot for those difficult-to-store toys.
Although I could have squeezed all of the books onto one shelf, experience from my days as a primary teacher tells me that it is better to have books separated into groups/categories. Plus it is easier for little hands to flick through smaller piles of books!
My husband whipped up these book-ends a few weeks ago because the books kept slipping down and it was driving me nuts. He was feeling creative that day and chose B for books and then L and E for our children’s names :) I’m still trying to decide whether or not to paint them…I quite like the natural wood look, but a blue or green might look good too.
In our daughter's room, we have these little floating shelves that hold a few books, but they're really more for display.
In keeping things real, here is what the book storage in her room currently looks like!
Certainly not ideal, but I'm waiting until we get rid of the change table so there is more space in there. Plus she loves to grab books while we're getting her dressed/changed so they're in a good spot for now :)
Here are some more inspiration pictures ...I love the red holders on the wall - they are actually spice racks from Ikea! The little wagon is cute too...
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