Disclosure: Any post may contain links to my shop or affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission from any purchase you make. All opinions about products I use are my own. Read the full disclosure and Privacy Policy HERE.
This week we are focusing in our kids spaces, so I’m going to show you a trick for keeping early reader novels from slipping, sliding, and falling all over your bookshelves.
Let me tell you about one of my twin girls named Allison. If you don’t know where Allison is, she is somewhere reading. She has even experimented with reading her paper books while in the bath. That went really well. Ha! Sometimes past her bedtime, we will catch her hiding somewhere in the house reading by moonlight. Over Christmas break, I actually had to tell her she wasn’t allowed to read anymore until she played with her sisters a while. She has different books stashed all over my house, so she will have one to read while she brushes her teeth, if she comes in the craft room with me, in the living room, office, kitchen, her baby brother’s room, the playroom, various hallways, my room … you get the idea. Whatever room she is in, she will pick up that book and start reading where she left off. There is no telling how many stories are currently running unfinished through her mind!!
Reading is just part of Allison being Allison. I don’t advocate the idea of hoarding by any means, but when I see a used set of children’s novels or a good deal somewhere on a series I think she might like, I buy them. {When my kids graduate to the next level of books, we will pass these on!}
So, I’ve borrowed an idea I’ve seen in elementary school classrooms for my own bookshelves to organize the masses of early reader novels. I’m going to pass this trick on to you.
Arrange the slim early reader novels into little bins on the bookshelf. That is it. Easy peasy. Kid spaces need to be easier to maintain than adult spaces. It is hard for kids to deal with novels slipping and sliding all over shelves. The shelves are bound to get disorganized. This solves that problem!!
If I were cool, I’d take this one step further and label the bins with which series go inside. I’ll get there, but it may not happen this week. It is time for the seasonal wardrobe change-out for all four kids. Fun, fun!
For now, this works for me!! (And it works for the kids, which probably matters more.)
Baby boy’s board books are in a bin in his room. Different answers for different situations, for sure. How do you organize your children’s books?
From my home to yours,
Mary
My son used to read by the moonlight, too. He is now a neonatologist. So keep her reading. ;)))
Oh good. So his brain continued to grow and his eyes weren’t ruined?! Good to hear!!
Oh no…just the opposite. 😉
This is so simple and yet I would not have thought of it! Thanks. I am off to the store to get bins 🙂
Yes, that is what I thought when I saw it in my kids’ classrooms – why didn’t I think of it? Glad to hear I’m not the only one. 🙂
Great idea. Love the decorative bins. Where did you find those?
Target. They always have different colors every time I go.
It doesn’t look like you need any more books, but I wanted to recommend the Ivy and Bean series. My daughter loves them!
Thanks for the rec! I’ll look into those!
Love this! We have two shelves in our Expedit that are dedicated to the book collections. It’s supposed to be board books lower and paper books higher to keep unkind toddler-hands out of the nicer books. But the older kids are TERRIBLE about putting them away. I will have to try the bins and see if it helps.
Now, I still find books all over my house … but at least they have a place to go when they eventually get put away! lol
I love the way the bookshelf looks now AND I noticed the picture arrangement behind the bookshelf. Looking good!!! Love you, Mom xoxo
Good eye!! 🙂
This made me smile…I used to get grounded from reading as a kid. I still read voraciously, it’s like an unquenchable thirst. Tell Allison to keep it up!
Yeah, reading is just her thing! 🙂
I see the babysitter’s club! I loved those books!
She is loving them!!
I know this is an old post but I LOVED the BSC series and saved them all. Can’t wait for my daughter to read them one day (she’s 2) haha
My 8 year old can not get enough of them!!! Your daughter will love them. 🙂
Has she read any of the The Adventures of The Bailey School Kids series? Zombies don’t play soccer, Mermaids don’t run track, etc
I found a plastic box (sterlite?) that holds mass market paperbacks really well and was pleased to find out it holds children’s books too. Just not at the same time. And since I don’t have a little one reading them, the lid comes in handy.
She hasn’t tried those yet, but I’ll look into them. We will be at the library a lot this summer. 🙂
Love this! My daughter has the perfect shelf for this set up in her room already, it is currently the shoe shelf (which I have to fight her to keep her shoes on!). I bet if I took the time to do this since she is a reader, she would probaly try really hard to keep it straight and orderly!
This system has been so much easier for my kids to keep tidy than when we just had books lining the shelves! Love it!
I have a bunch of books for my grandkids. Sometimes they come here to “checkout” books. My youngest grandson favorite thing is to pull ALL the books off the shelf. I’m going to give this a try and hopefully he will just pull off the basket with the board books and get distracted with those.
It is definitely worth a try!