some questions you may have?

#1: why is the shelf so barren? good question! a certain 7 year old (ahem) was misbehaving over the summer, so we cleared out his bedroom. since his bedroom is his time-out spot, books needed to be removed as well. his behavior has since improved, but with life being super busy, i haven’t had the time to replace all of his books.

and #2: what is that little bin sitting next to the bookshelf? this…..

since our 7 year old was in pre-k (which seems so long ago – *sniff-sniff*), he has been bringing home those little paper books – you know, those little books for early readers…with mainly sight-words. we love keeping them, but there were SO many and they were taking over the bookshelf….and our floors and house. i needed a spot where all of those paper books could live and still be easily accessible for them. this little bin did just the trick!

and it’s a good thing we kept them because our 5 year old is now starting to work on sight-words…so each night he picks a book and we sit in bed reading together.

moving on…..here is our 5 year old’s bookshelf….with some festive Halloween lights!…those will be coming down today….

notice it’s overflowing with books….because all of our 7 year old’s books had been moved here.

a couple times a year i sort through our book inventory. we are a BIG book reading house….and it can be seen when you look at our collection of books. sometimes it’s time for a book to be donated or given to a friend…or even just handed down to little sister’s bookshelf. so, i figured this was a great time of year to sort – and the school requesting donated books was just the kick in the rear i needed.

we also have this great little nightstand that has more than one purpose. i’ve said this before, but i love when one piece of furniture can offer you so much more than one function. this is not only a nightstand, but there is a hidden side door that our 7 year old loves! he likes to keep his most treasured possessions in there! and on the front of the nightstand are 2 large, slanted openings to hold books….

isn’t that awesome?! i love this piece of furniture! we found it at a little children’s furniture shop in town. it’s not from a big name store, otherwise i would share that with you! 🙂

anyway, this shelf gets a lot of use so it needed some cleaning up too.

i started in our 5 year olds room by pulling all of the books off the shelves. i pulled the books out for donation and picked out the books to return to our 7 year olds room….

after cleaning each (very dusty!) shelf, here is how it looked….

i do realize those 2 middle shelves are empty. stick around and read below to find out what i put on those shelves! 🙂

then i moved into our 7 year old’s room and pulled everything off the shelves. each one was cleaned and books were sorted….

after putting our keepers back, i found a perfect little spot for that bin of paper books….now it’s up off the carpet!…

has anyone seen these? we LOVE these brain quest pads. they are so fun! i gathered up our collection and simply stacked them on one of the shelves, for easy reaching…

you can see there on the top right side here….

if you have odd shaped books or, as in our case, books with wheels…i love to stand them up to give the shelf a little more character….it seems to invite children in to read…

so here is the shelf when i was finished!

{again, there are 2 empty shelves…but we have a small issue in our house. my boys love to bring stuffed animals and toys down from the playroom at night. our kids live in a world where Buzz and Woody and all of their toys are *real*. they have certain attachments to certain “people” from the playroom and the boys worry the toys are scared all alone in the dark playroom at night. i’ve kept these 2 shelves open for items that come down for a slumber party. this way, the toys are out of their beds and no one is waking up in the middle of the night after having rolled over onto a dump truck.}

and here is the nightstand cleaned up…

we have magazines on the left and school library books on the right – now we always know where those school library books are when it’s time to return them on Tuesday!….

sooooo, what did i do with those 2 empty shelves in our 5 year old’s bedroom? i located 2 baskets i had put away for re-purposing. initially, i had planned on using them for all of the smaller board books our daughter likes to read, but then the thought occured to me this would be a great spot for the boys electronics…our tag reader systems and tag books, our Leapster and games, our Leapster 2 and games, and our DSi, games, and accessories…..

all of these items have been here and there throughout the house in various storage systems…or ziploc bags…

not anymore…now they have a central location that is easy for the boys to access and easy for them (or me) to put away…

and there are those 2 baskets on the shelves….

looking good!….

and after much discussion with my 5 year old, here are the 2 books that we will donate to school on Friday….