Reading is a vital part of every child’s development. Between learning valuable lessons, gaining skills, and creating lasting memories, helping your children to read new books should always be encouraged. However, the endless picture books, early learning books, and young adult series collections can certainly pile up.
The solution is not always to offload books to a free library or your local thrift store. While this makes sense for some books, think about all the memories you have tied into your own beloved childhood books. Whether it was a Peter Rabbit story or the classic Love You Forever, hanging onto these sentimental favorites is something your children will definitely thank you for later.
Still, we get the frustration when there’s books scattered all over the house. In need of some book storage ideas for kids? Learn easy and stylish organization tricks to tidy up your kids book collections and grow a memorable library for them.
Whether you’re a first time parent, have several kids, or simply looking to organize your home, here are some of the most creative and clever ways on how to organize kids books.
10 Ways To Organize Your Child’s Books
#1 Create A Designated Library: To avoid having paperback and hardcover books thrown all across the house, the easiest way to get organized fast is to pick a dedicated spot in the home that will serve as your kids library. This can be in the corner of their room, in their playroom, or in the basement. Regardless of where you decide this will be, it’s helpful to have a dedicated space to organize books and manage them all at once.
#2 Declutter Books: About once a year, take stock of all your children’s books. Hang on to their favorites, or ones with sentimental value, but donate any books that haven’t been read or ones your children have long outgrown.
#3 Utilize Wall Space: Even if there’s no room in your kids nursery or bedroom for another bookshelf or storage furniture, make use of all the wall space, including vertical space, to hang floating shelves and picture ledges that hold the prettiest books you want to display.
#4 Cube Storage & Baskets: We love the flexibility of cube storage and chic wicker baskets. Organize books by color or story and place each category into a different basket, slide those into a cube storage unit and voila.
#5 Organize Books By Color: If you’re displaying books on a shelf, a very aesthetically-pleasing way to display them is through color coordination. Group books together by the spine color and gradually work your way across the spectrum, creating a stunning rainbow of books. Bonus, this works great with adult reads too!
#6 Show The Covers: If you have young children that need some encouragement when it comes to reading, make sure to display books with the front covers visible. By keeping books available and visible, children will be able to better make choices about what books they want to read and be more inspired to select their favorite. Plus, if they can make these choices without having to riffle through bins it will result in way less mess for you.
#7 Organize Books By Story: Another effective way to organize books, instead of by color, is to group them by content. This means creating categories like Princess Books, Science, Arts/Crafts, Dinosaur Books, Educational Reads, etc. This will make it much easier to find what book to read based on what mood your child is in.
#8 Store Holiday-Specific Books: A great way to reduce visible clutter in your child’s library is to pack away any holiday-specific books. This means grouping books by season ie: Christmas, Halloween, Easter, Summer, etc and keeping them stored in an attic or basement until that season arrives. This also makes it exciting for kids to anticipate re-reading their seasonal favorites.
#9 Label The Shelves: Maybe your little one can’t read yet, but you can! Having labels for specific categories and reading levels will help you easier organize books and return them to their rightful place. You can use a classic label maker or involve your kids to help create more fun labels out of glitter or cardboard.
#10 Teach Your Kids How To Care For Books: No matter how careful you are about organizing your children’s book collections, the mess will keep coming if you don’t teach them how to properly tidy up after themselves. Instill at a young age the importance of both being gentle with books (especially paperbacks) and returning them to their rightful place once they’ve finished reading them. This will help ensure your kids' books stay organized in the long term.
Shop The Best Children's Books
Elevate story time with everything from exciting dinosaur books for kids to magical princess books. At Marissa’s Books, we pride ourselves on curating an extensive collection of books for children to suit every age, reading level, and interest. Explore thousands of new and classic kids books online today.