To Rainbow or No-Bow…

For a very long time I have resisted using the rainbow system of organization. For some projects it simply may not be the best solution to achieve the goals at hand, and for some projects there simply may not be a rainbow of items to sort through. I recently took to my toddler’s play area where we house most of her books to see how the system worked for us.

So why did I resist the rainbow method for so long? Especially for an area dedicated to a rainbow-loving toddler? Well for starters, in my mind, my husband and I already had a system for putting books on the shelf at the end of the day. We had an area devoted to our Sesame Street books, our NYC-related books, our Peppa Pig books, our girl power books, and so on. To us the space mostly made sense, but if it was for our daughter what good was a system if she couldn’t participate in it? I was also worried that the rainbow shelves would be too hard to maintain, that they’d look so pretty it would create an unnecessary pressure.

All in all, I’d say the entire process took me a drop over an hour to complete. I put on some tunes, completely emptied the shelves, and got stacking based on the primary color on each book spine. I’m not going to lie, some books like Chicka Chicka Boom Boom threw me for a loop - there’s green, and orange, and pink! Just go with your gut and whatever color you see first - there are no wrong answers when it comes to art, I say! Yes, it pained me to separate our character books series, but I also liked seeing all of the colorful piles grow.

Once all of the books were sorted, I started with the red stack and arranged each color group from tallest to shortest. This exercise was also helpful in that I found some holiday books I was able to store, and I was reminded of some books I had not seen in ages. I kept the top of our bookshelf to the items we basically had before - some favorite toys, magazines, and recently gifted or sentimental books.

After resisting this for so long, I have to say, when it was all said and done I was so pleased. Especially for a play area, it just made everything look happy and cheerful. My daughter was obsessed when she saw it, too, and marveled at how many red books she has! As I said from the beginning of this venture, my whole philosophy is to have systems in place where everyone who is able to participate in them, can. And for our book loving girl, it will be far easier for her to place a blue book back where it goes versus finding the feminist section (although I was so pleased at how that one had grown over time)!

After we rainbow-ified our sheleves

Before the ‘bow