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Mackfam
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In particular, your picture books and story books. We live in a two story house, and the kid's bedrooms are upstairs. I keep the nicest books downstairs, and there are living books everywhere - living room shelves, top of the stairs, people's bedrooms. But, I was wondering, what do you do with the little golden books, or the Dr. Suess, or all the Thomas books, or, or... Do you keep them in the kid's bedrooms? Or do all the little people books live together in one place?
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Jen Mackintosh
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Wildflowers and Marbles
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mellyrose
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There are 2 bookshelves in the hallway outside the boys' bedrooms with kid books (2 shelves each). There is also one shelf in our bedroom with kid books. We also have a basket of kid books under 2 of our side tables in our living room. And shelves in each of the boys' bedrooms as well with kid books. Oh, and a basket of board books that is on top of one of the hallway shelves that will move into Lydia's room if she ever gets one.
We also have a large basket of library books that stays in the living room. Books that are being read or haven't been read yet stay in the basket. Books that have been read and are ready to be returned are put in the library bag that stays in the laundry room.
A couple years ago, I organized them all by subject, but that organization disappeared and it has been on my 'to-do list' for a year now  But, I WILL get it done this summer!!!
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Melanie in AZ
Colin (11/00), Nate (05/02), Lydia (04/07)
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Kristin
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Good question! Can't wait to hear all of the responses.
We live in a small house. We have a few baskets and a couple bookshelves in the living room (which also doubles as the classroom) all dedicated to children's books. When we're studying a particular topic, I often place baskets with books on that topic in other rooms as well. We usually have a stack of current favorites sitting on the couch or on the floor next to the couch. In the laundry room we have shelves of books waiting to be rotated onto the children's bookshelves. Haven't done a whole lot of that, though. There is never enough room for all the books!
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lapazfarm
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All over the dadgum house! Or at least it feels that way at times. Can you tell I have been frustrated with housework lately? 
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hylabrook1
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Ummm.... Everywhere? 
There is no room, except the bathrooms and laundry room, that doesn't have some kind of bookshelf. Some of them are quite large, actually. That doesn't mean that we don't have 25 or so boxes as well, and every endtable, the floor beside every bed, and a few corners as well are stacked high with books.
My major goal for this summer is to purge, organize, and catalog our books!
Peace,
Nancy
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CathinCoffeland
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Nancy...I have books everywhere including the bathroom and laundryroom :)
We have shelves in every room (not a shelf in the bathroom but they still manage to stack up in a basket there :) and the stair landing .
We keep one shelf just for library books but Ive given up trying to keep the rest sorted or organized. Our book collection is in constantly growing/being weeded and it is just being used so much that Im happy if things get stacked near the shelves rather than strewn across the house. (mommy is esp. notorious for this  )
We have one shelf "the million dollar shelf" on the landing that holds our OOP and "special" books as well as favorite series.
Books muct be returned to this shelf on pain of loss of library card!
But the rest of the house is in flux. though I try to keep current interest/learning stuff on the downstairs shelves and the upstairs in the kids rooms.
-Maggie
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Lauri B
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We have a fairly organized system for our home library, and the picture books we still have (FIAR and classics) are on two lower shelves of one of our bookcases.
When my children were younger, and picture books were more plentiful, we kept them on many lower shelves in our bookcases, and a small bookcase-full in the child's bedroom which was rotated to keep the selection fresh.
I hope that helps! :)
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Ruth
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I have baskets full of books in almost every room of the house. This is how I organized the rest of our books. It's worked out very well.
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Ruth
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SusanJ
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We have books in every room--actually many of them are stored in our laundry room, which also serves as study for dh, mud room, chest freezer housing and, well, book storage, I guess. We would definitely put a shelf in our bathroom if there were space. We used to debate the niceness of having a bathroom book shelf or book basket because reading on the toilet is not supposed to be one of those things you admit, even tacitly. But we had a friend emerge from our bathroom once with a magazine he had fished from the trash for lack of anything else to read. I'd rather have people see our bathroom bookshelf than fish through our bathroom trash.
We keep most kids books in the kids room (we only have one child in his own room and he shares his space with two large bookcases). We use a bottom shelf in the living room for board books and we have a basket next to the couch that is used to hold "rippable" picture books. I rotate these somewhat regularly and we also use it to hold books that wander out from the bedroom. If we used the library more those books would be in that basket as well.
Susan
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DominaCaeli
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We recently moved, and in our new place, our dining area is also our "library"--we have the dining table and chairs in the middle of the room with our bookshelves against the walls. Board books are in baskets on top of the shelves. I do most of our reading aloud in the dining room while the littles are eating, so the shelves are conveniently situated for us. I also like having them all in one place.
That said, we do have a few piles of overflow books in other areas--my husband and I each have our "currently reading" stacks bedside, the library books ready to be returned are in a basket near the door, my sewing books are upstairs by my machine, etc.
Now if only I could get a couple more bookshelves to fit in our dining area, we would be set... 
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Matilda
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We have three tall bookshelves (5 shelf) in our living room of grownup books and the special/seasonal books (like Christmas books that I don't want to leave out all the time) and three short (3 shelf) bookshelves in a spare bedroom that with the addition of a couple of beanbag chairs we have now dubbed "The Reading Room". Now, reading still takes place all over the house so I have baskets in each bedroom to hold those that are being enjoyed currently and a big wicker basket in the living room of our library books so they don't get mixed in with our personal collection.
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Christine
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Our books are in bookcases (and other furniture with shelves) in the living room and bedrooms. We are currently trying to determine how we can more efficiently use store bought or built-in bookcases in our living room, so that I can move the bookcases out of the bedrooms.
Christmas books are kept in a tub in the garage until Advent. They are returned to the tub after February 2.
Library books are kept in a big basket in the living room.
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Mackfam
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Ok...so I'm seeing that you all have the little people books in bedrooms and in living areas too. I suppose I was getting a little frustrated this weekend trying to clean up, and wondering if there was any benefit to keeping them all consolidated and out of the bedrooms. But, it would never work. There would always be books next to, on top of, under, around everyone's beds.
Ruth, I organized our books in much the same way at the beginning of the year and I have been loving it. I just love having all of the Catholic Mosaic books on the same shelf. I organized all of my Advent and Christmas books the same way on a separate shelf. And I've been toying with the idea of setting up shelves organized by season and the liturgical year. I always feel like we read more and the kids frequent the bookshelves more if I keep the books in some kind of logical order. I smell a summer project!
I suppose Clifford, Amelia Bedelia and Dr. Suess will just stay upstairs in the boy's room.
I am sooooo tired of showing the boys how to put a book back on a shelf. How hard is that? Why do they insist on stacking or using them as stepping stones in the room?
Thank you all for your input - especially those of you that validated my bathroom bookshelf! They're a captive audience in there!
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Jen Mackintosh
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Wildflowers and Marbles
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Matilda
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Mackfam wrote:
I am sooooo tired of showing the boys how to put a book back on a shelf. How hard is that?
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So glad to know that my son is not the only one. As much as he loves them, why not take care of them? The stacking!!!!
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Charlotte (Matilda)
Mom to four (11, 10, 9 & 5) an even split for now
with bookend boys and a double girl sandwich
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graciefaith
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We keep them downstairs. We're moving though and in our new house, ii might put up one rain gutter shelf next to each bed(they have bunk beds) and have them pick a few books a week to display there so they can read/look at them.
In our new house, i'm sure i'll keep all the books downstairs. I'm buying 3 tall shelves and 2 smaller ones.
OT: where do you ladies keep picture albums? We'll only have a living room and dining area and kitchen downstairs and then the bedrooms upstairs(4rdrm). The book shelves and all school related items will go in the dining area, since we school on the kitchen table. It's going to be a small home and i'm going to try and have the 4th room a play room.
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Cay Gibson
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Pretty much everywhere. 
We have a small bookshelf in a corner of the living room where we keep lots of picture books and I frequently find the two younger girls.
In the foyer section of our hallway I have a big bookshelf where all our really good picture books are. FIAR selections are on the bottom shelf and holiday selections (except Christmas which is stored away) are found on the second to last shelf.
Our chapter books are in the nearby storage closet on shelves.
Our Mosaic books are on a shelf in my bedroom along with our Montessori and Good Shepherd supplies.
In the sitting room we have a big cabinet and our school books are kept in the top doors.
The children also have several books in their rooms. My 10-yr-old as all her American Girl and Nancy Drew books on a shelf in her room.
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Cay Gibson
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CrunchyMom
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We have a small row home, and my dh built some shelves very similar to these for most of the children's books. We put them in the upstairs hallway. It is really narrow, and it was impossible to keep any full sized shelves in it without having to always squeeze by, but these are aesthetic and useful. We have a few coffee table type books and statues and pictures out of reach on the top shelves.
We also have a daybed alcove with shelves up the sides, and that's where most of our adult books are. Fortunately, a lot of dh's work related books are in his office there; so, we don't have to find space for it all at home.
I keep all the little paperbacks in a basket--they just don't shelve well, ime, even on the schoolhouse style shelves.
I also keep a shelf of less used books in the boys playroom.
My boys, even the 21 month old, are such, idk what it is, sorters?? So, they won't get one little Beatrix Potter to look at but instead take the whole set to sit and look through the pile. The same with golden books, those Fr. Losavik(sp?) type books, or other series books. Even works topically (my 3 year old will take ALL the dinosaur books). Drives me NUTS!
ETA: I'm not sure the upstairs hallway is particularly convenient except that it makes use of already limited and otherwise useless space.
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Leslie
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This is a timely topic for me! I was taking a break from reorganizing some bookshelves when I came to check-in here :). Right now we have a one story home so all of our books are on one floor. But, they are truly scattered throughout the house. We have 2 tall bookshelves in the living room that I'd like to keep for our nicer books (Hardcover, books that belonged to us when we were children). We also have 2 tall (ugly) shelves in the hallway. I really want to part with them, but I'm reluctant to give up the space for books. Each bedroom has a small bookshelf and so does my husband's office (he keeps all of his medical texts and test prep books in there).
I'm using baskets now, a lot. But, the only rhyme or reason to it at the moment is that library books are kept separate from books we own. I'd like to have baskets of different genres...I think. I'd like to easily grab a basket of field guides, or books on princess/fairies. It seems my kids soak up one subject (sometimes for a few weeks) before they are ready to abandon it (at least for a time) and move on to the next topic. I have a vision for this basket system, but I haven't put it into action yet.
We also have stacks. Stacks of books next to my bed, in the bathroom, in the kitchen, next to the computer. Right now the stacks aren't that bad because we had company over the weekend.
My ideal: my mom's house. She has floor to ceiling bookshelves in the living room and the bedrooms. They are organized by topic and then by author. Children's books are closer to the ground. Reference books are near the dining room table. Almost all of them are hardbound and some have been in our family since my grandfather was a little boy. They are all well used, well loved and I still wake up wanting to look something up in one of them--but we live 500 miles away from her now!
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Mackfam
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graciefaith wrote:
| We keep them downstairs. We're moving though and in our new house, ii might put up one rain gutter shelf next to each bed(they have bunk beds) and have them pick a few books a week to display there so they can read/look at them. |
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This idea is really intriguing!! What is a rain gutter shelf??
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Jen Mackintosh
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graciefaith
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[
This idea is really intriguing!! What is a rain gutter shelf??[/QUOTE]
It's not much of a space saver since you can fit more books into a regular book shelf, but a nice way to display books for your children and i hear they are more likely to read/look at books when displayed this way.
Here are a few websites about it.
Family Fun Rain Gutter Shelves
Rain Gutter Shelves Info
Pics of Rain Gutter Shelves
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4Real Forums : Language Arts Come Alive
Topic: Where do you keep your books?
