Organizing grown-up books—there’s a reason I didn’t say “adult books”—is easy: just alphabetize and put them on the shelf. Of course, you can be obscene about it and give your favorites their very own, glass-fronted bookshelf (cough Jason cough) or divvy up the titles by genre, but that’s going above and beyond.
Kids’ books are difficult, period. They’re weirdly-shaped and sometimes floppy. Younger kids don’t know the alphabet and wouldn’t alphabetize their books even if they did. Library books get mixed in with the books you own and before you know it you’re facing maximum library fines.
I love these crates-turned-wall-storage from IHeart Organizing, but well…I’m lazy.
And I really love these adorable rolling library carts from Land of Nod, but $199?! Get real.
So I came up with an easier solution: baskets.
We keep our 3-year-old daughter’s library books in a sturdy basket in the the living room. The basket is always ready to be hauled over to the couch, out onto the deck, or what-have-you. This also makes it easy for me to track down the books when it’s time to return them.
As for the ridiculous number of books Simone already owns, they’re simply stored on her bookshelf. But last week I realized that everything would be so much easier if all of the bendy paperbacks were stored in a basket. They’re always falling over when shelved, and the spines are so thin that it’s almost impossible to identify them by the spine alone: which meant that every single book used to end up on the floor just because Simone was looking for Little Penguin’s Tale
Now Simone actually rifles through the paperbacks before selecting one. That’s a win in my book.
How do you organize kids’ books?
