Finding a Home for Seasonal Books

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Last fall I wrote a short series about how I've been working on living a little more seasonally.  I like to read winter books in the winter and summer books in the summer.  I make various changes throughout our home as the seasons change and I've been making myself little capsule nail polish sets for each season, with nail polishes I already own.  I've just found great delight in embracing and living each season as they come.  (You can read those here: Living Seasonally, Changing with the Seasons, Opening/Closing Ceremonies.)

Of course, in my current state of life, that translates to reading seasonally appropriate picture books.  Picture books have, somehow, turned somewhat into a passion/obsession of mine with the boys and I reading around 1,000 new ones each year.  (I think that qualifies as a passion at best.)  I have good lists going on Goodreads for each season and plan a whole post about how we manage and read 150+ Christmas picture books, mostly in the month of December.  We rely heavily on the library but I also add to our picture/board book collection occasionally (particularly for the books that the library owns only a few copies of but are in high demand when in season.  I've been waiting months for a few winter books I still don't have.)  

Of course, with a small house and new items, there is often the dilemma of where to put them.  We floundered in this for awhile but it wasn't until I really started growing our collection last year that it became a problem.  I wanted somewhere to put our seasonal books that were separate from the rest of our kid books (currently in 3 locations around the house).  Also the seasonal library books that we hold onto for months at a time (if there is no hold line) and have read so I want them separate from our main library stash so I wouldn't have to think every day when I pick books to read "we already read those".  

There are few things I love like a new organizing challenge.  I finally came up with something super original.  I bought a basket from Target.  Then it was too small so I bought another bigger one and returned the first.  And that is where we are today.

 
As I wrote over 2 years ago, we try to give even temporary items a home because it's the only way to live in space without chaos.   Our kid library book storage hasn't moved since I wrote that post, just changed a bit (why did I ever keep them all flat???).  The boys and I are in here many times a day pulling books to read or putting ones back (that one seems to be just me).

The basket of seasonal books sits next to the tv stand, not too far from the couch where we usually read books. I took these pictures last week before I completely packed away all remnants of winter from our house.  There's some residual Valentine's books in there too.

Our seasonal books go in there as soon as I deem it is seasonal appropriate for them to be out.  Spring for me begins March 1st, whether or not the weather is agreeing with me.  We don't have a ton in the way of just spring books but this one and this one went in the basket!  Once we read seasonal books from the library and I've decided that I like them enough to read again, those will go in the basket too.  But not until we've read them.  Our library stack is more of a TBR for picture books (and sometimes "I need to take pictures of these and write captions for them for Instagram" too). 

 

In the off-seasons our seasonal books have many homes.  Most of the Christmas books are in the high shelves, behind baskets, in my office (which have largely stayed the same as the after picture in this post).  A few other seasonal books are up there too although at the moment I don't remember which (thank goodness we have a step-ladder!).  Some for seasons we don't have many books for live in the same part of our buffet as the non-seasonal, non-tall decor (as seen here).  I should have these all in one place but I'm experimenting to see what works best.  Again, a good organizing dilemma! 

I was excited about having a basket for easily setting apart our own seasonal books as well as one we read and reread and reread from the library.  It also made me appreciate how serious I've been taking this seasonality and my life in picture books.  We've continually made our small space work for us and there's room for all the important things, even a lot of picture books.