I was planning on putting up cute snow pictures today but Auntie Leila asked for bookshelves, so bookshelves it is.
I shared pictures of our library/playroom/homeschool room last year but I've done some rearranging since then. I reoriented our bank of IKEA shelves so that it enclosed the play area in the hopes that it would be less distracting to those actually attempting to be homeschooled. I had Chris make a back to the exposed shelf to give us a bit of wall space to hang maps on on the other side and also to stop children from shoving all the books out and tunneling through to the other side. It's been wholly effective at deterring tunneling but only mildly effective at reducing distractions. Mostly due to the fact that those banished to the playroom side have taken to playing/frolicking on top of the shelves in order to stay out of the baby's range and also drive their mother crazy.
When I did the rearranging I also sorted out the books and labeled the sections for ease of re-shelving. I wasn't sure if it would help or not but it has gone surprisingly well--especially considering only one of my children can actually read the labels. There were so many books before that the boys were having a hard time finding what they were looking for and a lot of the books were living lonely and forgotten lives.
I pulled out all the books we had and sorted them into piles to get a feel for what categories we needed. I ended up with:
- Goose, Seuss, Scarry and Spy (John's favorite section by far, which is why there are hardly any actually on the shelf)
- Picture Books--two shelves of favorite stories
- Fairy Tales and Fables
- History and Geography
- Science & Nature
- Insects & Ocean Life
- Animals & Dinosaurs
We also have a section of poetry books on the bottom of our homeschool shelves that I couldn't fit in here. And then of course there are even more books stashed in the bedrooms upstairs.
As you can see my labels are very fancy--index cards cut down to size and stuck down with packing tape.
Opposite the children's books are our main bookshelves, also from IKEA and hard to photograph due to the skinniness of the room. I like these shelves because they are sturdy (made from actual wood, not press-board), they have a built in feel and with all our military moves I know I can always go pick up some more if I need to reconfigure them. I could actually use a couple more right now but I have no idea where I would stick them.....
These shelves were organized by subject and alphabetized by author but unfortunately our sweet little Margaret is a bookshelf dumper. And also a bookshelf climber. I think it's the red hair.
I did recently gather up all of my book piles from around the living room and stick them on this one, 'you need to finish reading these before you buy any more books' shelf of shame. I only let myself keep out four that I'm currently reading and I'm not going to grab any more until I've actually finished those. Well except those two from the library that I need to pick up tomorrow. But after that I promise.
And lastly, my favorite shelf. I'm not a collector of things in general but I started picking up these Agatha Christie books our local used book store in Florida and now I'm hooked on them. Apparently they are from a collection that you could buy and then you would have one new book sent to you by mail each month. How fun would that have been? I wish there was something similar now. I suppose I could just go on Amazon and pick one out for myself each month but that just doesn't really have the same feel............
Make sure you click on over to Like Mother, Like Daughter for even more captured contentment and bookshelves :)