I have been a book nerd for as long as I can remember and having a “home library” in my home was always a goal of mine. I am so pleased to have one in our house and it is one of my favorite rooms. Walking in the door makes me so happy and reading with my children in here is a dream come true. We have it organized in a way that works for our family and I am excited to share that here with you.
The Main “Rainbow Shelves”
The main feature and the main bookshelves in here are the tall, rainbow organized bookshelves. This is where the bulk of our picture books are stored. We have them organized by color right now because I have small children and I’m convinced that if we used any other system, such as alphabetical order, right now our shelves would be a disaster. It is so easy for my children (especially my youngest who can’t read yet) to place a book in the group with it’s same color. I have learned to associate different books by the color of their spine so usually it isn’t as hard as I originally thought it would be to find specific books. Also, the beauty of the rainbow array cannot be denied. It makes my heart skip a beat. Eventually, when my children are older, I plan on organizing them in a more practical way for that stage of our life. Right now this suits our needs and we love it.
The “Feature Shelves”
These front-facing feature shelves are probably my favorite shelves in our library. I switch them out at least once a month with different seasonal themes like in our Year of Picture Books post or with other topics that are relevant to us at the moment. I put anywhere between 14 and 40 books on these shelves at a time and it brings me such joy to change them.
The Board Book Shelves and “Book Buddies”
Underneath our main “feature shelves” is our board book shelf. This is the space we dedicate to board books and honestly, they aren’t really organized. This doesn’t bother me because there aren’t too many of them and they get a lot of use from my youngest so it is easier to keep it flexible. On the top of this shelf is where we keep our book character “reading buddies” and those few books to the side on the floor are oversized books that are literally too big to fit on any of our shelves.
The “Early Reader and Beginning Chapter Book Shelves”
My oldest is a new reader so these shelves get a lot of use form him. The bottom of the three has leveled readers, the next one up has easy beginning chapter books, the next one up has beginning chapter books that are a bit more difficult and the top one has random middle grade books. The rest of our middle grade books are on the bookshelves in another room of the house where I keep my books. There is a shelf above the top one pictured and below the bottom one pictured. Those two shelves are ones that I use for books that are waiting to be photographed and shared on my bookstagram account on Instagram.
The “Extra Feature Shelves”
There was a bit of extra space behind the door in our library so I figured we might as well sneak in a couple more feature shelves. Honestly, these shelves don’t have a specific purpose yet. Mostly they are constantly changing with new books or books that we happen to be rereading a lot at the moment. I am happy with them this way, but may give them a dedicated purpose down the road if a need arises.
Decor
The decor in this room is super simply. Partly because the focus is the books, but mostly because it is a small room and there really isn’t much extra space anyways. The old, well-loved chair is oversized, reclines and is where we do a lot of story times. The reading lamp is an older one from Pier 1 Imports, so sadly I don’t have a link for it. The shelf shaped as a bee displays a couple of tiny board books that are beloved in our home. The garland that goes across the top of the whole back wall has artwork form my children clipped to it and is my favorite decoration in the room. A close second are the canvas pictures. I blurred out the faces of my children out of respect for their privacy.
Shelf Sources:
The tall rainbow shelves are from Ikea. The two wide ones on the sides are THESE ones (which we also used for the beginning chapter book shelf) and the skinny one in the middle is THIS one.
We used THESE extensions for the tall shelves from Ikea so they would go up higher.
The front-facing “feature shelves” are white photo ledges from Ikea. We used the long ones HERE for the main “feature shelves” and the short ones HERE for the small ones behind the door.
* THESE long front facing shelves from Amazon look similar and so do THESE shorter ones. *affiliate links
The short and long “board book shelf” is THIS SHELF from Ikea.
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