On the Bookshelf: Books that Made the Cut
/
Uff. Let me first brush off the blog a bit—it’s a little dusty around here. The housekeeper was busy keeping a tiny human fed and happy, snuggling with her boys, and enjoying the holiday season ;)
Probably like many of you, the post-Christmas season felt like I was constantly navigating the maze of Amazon boxes, finding bits of ripped wrapping paper in strange places, and trying to find places for all the new stuff we received. Especially after months of feeling constantly behind in housework, having visitors, trying to find new rhythms with three kids, I was feeling one word: overwhelmed. Well, two words: overwhelmed and stressed.
One of my number one stressors is clutter. When I feel like I can’t keep up with the stuff and the house always feels messy, it often leaves me feeling like I just want to sit and say “whatevs”—I’ll just live like this forever because it’s easier than managing it. Have you been there?
Thankfully, I know that a little time, intentionality, and encouragement can help me get up and get going. The closets have been cleaned up a bit, the broken and unused toys purged, the art supplies organized and cleaned out (anyone else wonder how so many markers lose their caps?), and random kitchen dishes donated. But, the other day I had to face one of the most challenging areas for me to declutter: kid’s books. I don’t love the books scattered all over the floor, but I do love books for the kids. So what’s a girl to do?
Well, thanks to Tidying Up on Netflix, I figured that could start with a big pile on the floor and go from there. We collected all the books from the house, threw away the books that were beyond repair, chose our favorites, and then decided which ones to donate. We ended up keeping probably about 75% of them (mostly because I did a book purge about 6 months ago and have been better about not buying a whole bunch of random books at thrift stores), but it still feels good to weed out the 25% that were never read or simply worn out. My hope is to have a smaller library filled with books we really love to read together instead of a haul of random books that are tossed around but hardly read. Especially with the public library so accessible, I don’t need to own all the books we’d like the read :)
I wanted to share some of top “keeps” that will probably always make the cut—these are books that I would gladly gift or recommend. You can see some other books that we’ve loved purchasing or picking up at the library here.
We’ll start with books that we still love looking through and are lovely reference books. Even after owning them for a while, we always spot new things and learn something interesting every time we read them.
We also plan on adding the Big Book of Blue in the near future :)
Next up, are the oldies but goodies. I love vintage/tried and true books, but these are the ones the boys still love to read (and I love them too). In fact, Duck is a book I remember reading as a little child!
Gregory the Terrible Eater (I just adore the tongue-and-cheek humor of this book!)
Rosie’s Walk (It’s just plain adorable)
Goodnight Moon (We also have Goodnight Loon like a good Minnesotan family. Ha!)
Duck (cute and simple—perfect for baby)
Home for a Bunny (Just a sweet story. I love anything by Margaret Wise Brown)
Finally, we have the books that I love to read just as much as the kiddos. They are fun, have adorable illustrations, and never fail to entertain :)
Trucks Galore (the illustrations on this are quirky and cute!)
Go! Go! Go! Stop (This is hands-down Sam’s favorite book and both boys love to interact with it!)
Never Ask a Dinosaur to Dinner (fun rhyming and well-illustrated)
Bugs Galore (We also have Cars Galore—we love all of them!)
Giraffes Can’t Dance (A sweet story and fun to read)
These are a just a few of our favorites that I thought I’d share just in case you want to add a new book to your library list or your own home library. Tell me: what are your family’s favorite books?
Have a good one!
Nicole
Ps. Affiliate links are included in this post. If you want to know more about them, check out my affiliate disclosure.
