Monday, April 20, 2009

Our New Shelves!!

Bunking the boys' beds left a large void in their room where Caleb's bed used to be. I had planned on buying a bookshelf for the spot, but it would have taken me several months to save up enough money for it. That's okay, I can be patient. Then, I read about gutter shelves. That's right, gutters. They are really made out of plastic gutters from Lowe's. I saw them on Sonlight's message board and thought it looked like a great idea. Once I found out that it would cost me less than $60 to do the whole room...I was sold! I called my dad and he was supportive, but Shawn thought I was crazy. Oh well, that's his usual reaction to most of my ideas. Last week, I finally got the $$ and time to do it. Well, I didn't actually have the time, but I fit it in anyway. Once I got the materials from Lowe's, the project only took me about 2 hours to complete including having 3-yo and 5-yo helpers.
And here's the finished product:
Pretty cool looking, huh? Both my dad and Shawn agreed that they look great. They hold a lot more books than I thought and are very sturdy. After I had installed them, I found them described in a book that I'm reading called The Read-Aloud Handbook. The author claims that these shelves increase reading as the children are more likely to read a book when they can see the cover instead of the spine. I'll post more about this book later, but it was nice to get some validation from a real book. We don't really have a problem with our boys "reading" books, but at least now they are much more likely to put them away when they are done.

I also used the gutter shelves at the end of the boys' beds.
The boys read a lot of books at night so there were always books littered at the bottom of their beds. This created three problems for me: 1. It is hard to make their beds in the morning. 2. The books often slide off the bed. I have to remove the drawers underneath C-Monster's bed to get them and they can get damaged if they fall off of the top bunk. 3. It drives me CRAZY!
I do want to encourage them to read at night so I don't want to get rid of the books; I just needed a safe way to store them next to their beds. The gutter shelves work perfectly! They are plastic so I don't need to worry about the boys hurting themselves and they don't take up much room.
Overall, I'm very happy with the environment that this creates in the boys' room.

1 comment:

Charlotte-Ann Photography said...

I love the shelving idea, especially by the bed. My daughter also has book everywhere at night. :D Thanks for the tip!