the great bookshelf swap

We decided to move the bookshelves out of the extra bedroom and put them in the living room.  I’m constantly bummed that we have no places to put junk in the living room.  I’d like some shelves for picture frames and knick knacks and to kind of make the room look more like we live there.

So we went to Ikea which was a trip much better than I expected it to be.  Did you know that if you are planning on spending $100 or more on furniture Ikea will buy you lunch?  They do.  You go and get a bunch of food from the cafeteria then when you pay for your furniture you hand them your food receipt and they deduct it from your furniture purchase.  Very cool.  And the meatballs ARE delicious!

We bought three giant Billy bookshelves for our bedroom and a tall dresser.  We decided it’s time to start transitioning Emma into big girl furniture.  If anyone knows her in real life you will know that my kid is GIANT.  She’s a little over 3 and a half feet tall.  She just keeps growing lengthwise and remains about the same weight she was when she was two. 

Sometimes you read those horrifying stories about police discovering a two year old who only weighed 20 pounds.  When I see those stories there’s always this little voice in the back of my mind that was worried because in two years Emma has grown about 5 or 6 inches and has only gained about 5 pounds.  She’s skinny like a beanpole, but thankfully at her check ups the doctor tells me she’s a healthy weight.  I’ll go with that.

Anyhoo … she’s in one of those toddler beds that uses the crib mattress.  Pretty much every night I hear her thump something on the wall because her lanky little limbs cannot be contained by crib mattress alone.  When we brought up the exciting news of getting a big girl bed she quickly vetoed that idea.  My mom offered the trundle bed she has in her extra room.  That’s the bed that Emma sleeps in whenever she spends the night at Ba-Chan & Ji-Chan’s house.  She was much more amendable to that idea since she loves that bed.  So done and done. 

Now onto the books.

I moved all the books off of one bookshelf in the extra bedroom.  This is what that looked like.

ugh.

Ray spent the better part of the day building the bookshelves and moving them into the bedroom.  I got one filled.

So now, the day after this was taken they pretty much look the same except there are some clothes piled up on the nearly empty one.  Ray did laundry and I haven’t organized the dresser yet so I needed a place to put clothes and voila.  I promise that I will finish this tomorrow.

I love organizing my books.  Sometimes I do it alphabetical, sometimes by size, but most of the time it’s by author and then publication date.  The thing that’s been depressing me about this whole ordeal?  There are at least 3 full shelves on one bookshelf full of books I haven’t read yet.  So many.

So why all the furniture moving?  That’ll be a post for another day!