How do you store books and then pass them along?
August 13, 2024
I learned something Very Important last week, and it’s: go school supply shopping at Target at 4:30pm on a Wednesday. There were only two other people — only two other people! — in the school supply section. They had more than three colors of folders left. They had copious packs of all-black whiteboard markers. They did not have pre-sharpened Ticonderogas but we got them anyway, because sharpening your own pencils builds character. My children were calm. No one teared up from overstimulation (me); no one threatened to abandon the cart and walk out with nothing (also me). People, I unlocked a secret door🚪
I know many of you are gearing up for back-to-school season — or have already arrived there — so I wish you godspeed, lots of grace and patience, and extra kindness toward your sweet self as you balance all the things this May-tember. My beloved grandmother always used to say, “This too shall pass,” and listen, she lived to be 102yo so she knew a thing or two. This too really shall pass. Hang in there. You got this.
(Speaking of: if you’re looking for books to ease this transition — I, for one, am always looking for books to ease any transition — I have a back-to-school booklist on my Bookshop.org storefront.)
📫 Questions from you
Recently I received a great question from Nat:
You might have written about this before and I’m just not remembering, but how do you store your books, and/or pass them along to others readers or households? As much as I love to introduce new books, I have a hard time phasing them out. I would like to streamline our collection a bit so that all of books actually get the viewing time they deserve. Also, any specific bookcase recommendations welcome!
Dear Nat,
Indeed I have written about this before — a whole long post about storing books and reading nooks that contains photos of my house that simultaneously make me laugh and cringe (even after I updated it once).
Things are different around here now — I am definitely not going to show you my children’s bedroom anymore because it’s almost unrecognizable — but there are still umpteen places where I store books, in every room in my house, including a walk-in closet that I have essentially turned into a walk-in bookcase. (As in: there is an actual bookcase in there, plus shelves full of books. And now I need more room.)
But you asked three things specifically, and I’ll address them one by one, albeit in a rearranged order:
How do you decide which books to phase out?
With the volume of books I have in my house, phasing out is not optional — I have to get rid of books at least a few times a year, or there would be no room for, like, people, and I am inordinately fond of my people.
This is an arbitrary process. I don’t do this on a schedule. I simply decide one Saturday — it’s always a Saturday — that today is the day I have the time, energy, and inclination to purge my children’s books, and so I do.
Physically, I just sit in front of whatever bookcase or book receptacle I’ve decided to deal with, pull all the books off or out, and go through them one by one. I decide to phase out the ones that, in essence, no longer apply, because:
My kids have aged out of a book and I don’t want to keep it for sentimental reasons
We never really enjoyed the book to begin with
The book is fine but we have other titles that better cover the topic
I also get rid of books that are problematic enough I don’t want to work through their problems, though this very specific weeding has really only happened at scale once or twice. If you want to read my saga of deciding to get rid of the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder — which is still the most controversial thing I’ve ever written here, and is still a hill I’ll die on — you can do that here.)
How do you pass books along to other readers or households?
I have various avenues for passing along books to other readers and households:
Some of them I drop off at the many Little Free Libraries in my neighborhood, because to me that’s just good Little Free Library karma
Some of them — mostly diverse and inclusive titles, and brand-new books I’ve received from publishers to review — I offer to my children’s teachers, especially if they are just a few years into their careers and still building their own classroom libraries
Some of them I pass on to a family member (this newsletter’s #1 fan since the beginning) with three kiddos a few years younger than mine
How do you increase viewing time for the titles you have?
When you have as many books as I do, you have to put intentional thought and energy into increasing viewing time — and to be sure, there are still plenty of titles that languish on our shelves because of the sheer volume. (It’s… a lot.)
That said, I do a few things:
I still rotate books on a front-facing bookshelf that might very well be for toddlers but that I plan on using forever — I use this exclusively for our seasonal books (see the current selection of summer titles). My kids are now 7 and 10yo — they still use this shelf and read the titles I place here.
This is a Rainbow Resources front-facing bookshelf I bought off Craigslist. It would have been worth every penny had I paid full price, and if I have any bookcase recommendations, it’s any front-facing one. I stage chapter books face-out on these cheap but super sturdy plastic book holders, which I place on a huge bookshelf we have in our main family room
Shown here: Katherine Applegate’s excellent novel-in-verse, Odder I leave books at my children’s seats at our kitchen table, on their beds, in little random stacks around the house where I know they will come across them
We recently gave our children their own bathroom — my long-held conviction that the secret of a happy marriage is separate bathrooms was overridden by my need to not compete for space with two people deeply invested in complex, multi-step hairstyles every morning — so I just ordered a wall-hanging magazine rack that I plan to stock with rotating titles, next to the toilet
Even though I just said it takes intention and energy to increase viewing time of the books you have, there’s also not a ton of rhyme or reason to my method — I don’t put “rotate books” on my calendar or make a plan for how often to do it. I simply put books in my kids’ way as often as I can.
As always, this is just the way I do things in my own home, with my own family — yes, I do this for my husband, too; books are my love language — but there’s certainly no right or wrong way to do it.
Library management, even at home, is a neverending and ongoing process, and it should be — as our lives change, so do our books, and maybe, as our books change, so do our lives.
Sarah
P.S. All Bookshop.org links are affiliate ones — I receive a small commission if you make a purchase — which is a small but surprisingly not-insignificant way to support this newsletter.
We have a half sized Billy in T's room, a fullsized Billy in the sitting room, and a shelf in our room. I got annoyed with the shelf and decided to clear off a shelf in my office for outgrown but still sentimental picture books, and put all the picture books in a big pile for T to sort. I need to do the chapter books, I've got a better sense of what Teddy will read (myths, dragons, adventured) and won't read (cutesy anthromorphised animal stories).
My August project (let's be honest, my September project for a visiting grandma) is to get all the series together so they are more accessible.
Last year, we organised a book swap at the school for WBD so I do tend to hang onto them to donate en masse, unless we have a friend who would be particularly interested in a topic or would be keen on a book.
Oh my, that last line!!!!!!!!! "as our lives change, so do our books, and maybe, as our books change, so do our lives." I mean, GOLD.