The kids go to the library every week and bring home 10+ books. For a while I had a bin on the built-ins in the family room to hold the library books, but I never liked the bin there and my youngest had trouble reaching the books inside. Then one day it dawned on me, we had a completely empty bookshelf in the office. This is my favorite bookshelf ever. We found it at Room & Board.
In our townhouse, this little bamboo tetris style bookshelf is actually what we kept toys on. The different compartments are fun to style. Since our current house has the built-ins we use for concealed toy storage, we relegated the bamboo bookshelf to the office. There it sat empty for two years. Until now.
One evening as I glanced at the overflowing bin of books, which now had 10+ library books plus some of our own books, I snatched it up and hauled it off to the office. It only took me ten minutes to sort the books and style them on the bookshelf. I placed them in small stacks that would be easy for the boys to pull out and look through. There were two piles of library books, oversized books standing vertically, a pile of spanish reading books, and the rest were arranged by size to fit in the cubbies. The original bin also has a place on the shelf to hold the kids recent artwork.
Now the empty bookshelf has a purpose and the boys have an easy way to access all their books. We love to encourage reading, so we also have the front facing bookshelves in the playroom, which houses most of our book collection. Now the boys have a good reading spot on each floor of the house. There are a couple armchairs in the office they can curl up in to read.