Creating Our Intentional Bookshelf: Part 2

We've done some more work in the processes of creating our own intentional bookshelf. We're following the guide set in the book The Intentional Bookshelf by Samantha Munoz. If you haven't read part 1 yet (which walked us through developing our purpose and categories) you can find that here.

After I wrote part 1 and began the sorting process I realized that there were two important categories I had left out, and as I sorted books I found that there were a few more that (while not as prominent) were a part of the collection that we already had and wanted to keep. The two most important categories that I forgot were wordless picture books and sign language books. I'll explain more later.

The sorting process began a bit rough. As you can imagine, sorting through stacks of books with two toddlers wondering around can be a bit of a challenge. They were constantly pulling out books and running off with them or putting them back into other stacks. Sorting all of our books at once was just a little too much to take on during one nap time or at bedtime (because let's face it, by the time this prego mama gets both girls to sleep there's only another hour or so, if that, before I can't keep my eyes open either). So to make the sorting our books into categories a little easier I did one book type at a time. I started with the board books, and then moved onto pictures books, followed by interactive books. (Note: some of our board books are also "interactive", meaning they have flaps or finger trails or things of that nature, but for the purposes of my sorting I put those books in with the board books and kept "interactive books" as things like sticker books, color books, activity books with experiments, crafts, etc.)

Board Books
Here's what my board book sorting looked like. A bit of a mess. Many of the books could fit into multiple categories, but so if I had an abundance of one and not the other I tried to balance them out a little bit. As you can see above, the sorting was a little messy, but overall I think I got a good idea of what we have and was able to make some notes of categories that we would like to add more of.


Pictures Books

This was by far my biggest category. The picture to the right is how I store our pictures books currently when not in use, which, in all honesty isn't very convenient, but it's the best place I've got for them for now. Ultimately these books became a bit overwhelming to sort through. Not only are there just a lot of books there, but so many of them fit into multiple categories that I had trouble creating my stacks. The other issue with sorting these was that they were going to have to go back into the toy chest for storage, and while I could keep them in some order, they weren't really going to stay organized. What I ended up doing was creating a Google Drive spread sheet, and while it was time consuming I'm so glad that I chose to include this in our organizing for multiple reasons. For each book on the spreadsheet I included the title, author, book type (because I eventually added the board books to it as well), and what categories it fit in. By putting it into the spreadsheet I was able to assign multiple categories to the same book, and later when I'm looking for a particular category all I have to do is type the category name into my search bar and they'll all highlight to make them easy to find! The other thing that is super convenient about having all of our books organized on Google Drive is that I have access to it on my phone. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a book at the store or the library and then couldn't remember if we already owned it or not. This was I know what we have even when we're out and about!

Interactive Books
This was our smallest category to sort, which was a nice way to end our sorting adventure. Ultimately these books were mostly stored away with our crafting things because they don't usually get left out all the time.

Sorting through all of these books was certainly a learning experience. While I love our home library, there were several books that I came across that I wondered if we really needed to be part of our permanent collection because they aren't really books we ever read (even when they're out on our bookshelf) or we have other books with the same story/message that we enjoy more. I definitely think I'm going to go back through them at some point and pull out some of those books...but if you know me you know how bad I am at getting rid of things, so we'll see how long it takes me. Ha!

I'd love to hear more about your collection! Do you have a large collection or just a small shelf of favorites? Do you keep every book you get or do you go through them every so often and take out books that aren't being used?