Visiting Our Little Free Library

Our neighborhood has some wonderful families. It's the kind of place where you can ask someone to pick your kids up after school if you're running late or borrow a cup of milk from to make that recipe you already started and discover you're out of milk. Maybe it is because our neighborhood is somewhat secluded, but it feels warm and fuzzy. Maybe it is because we have an active facebook group. I feel lucky to be happy with our school and our community. Getting to know your neighbors is so important, especially when you have kids, don't you think?

We've lived here for over 3 years and it was just earlier this year that I learned of this cool "Little Free Library" that resides in our neighborhood.  The idea is that you take a book, return a book. It works on the honor system. Super Simple.

I'd been meaning to get the kids over to check it out for quite some time. You know how it goes though, school, work, sports schedules and all the rest of it. Even a week earlier I had my daughter pull some books from the book shelf to take and drop off in the Little Free Library.... but they sat by the front door for a full week! Finally, I just wanted to get this crossed off my bucket list.

It's only a 10 minute walk to get there. For the kids it was faster, they were on bikes.

We had a lot of books to donate. But, I knew this Little Free Library was small and wanted to get an idea first how much room was in there, so we started off small and brought 12 teeny level 1 reader books and 12 more toddler and preschool story books to leave for someone else to enjoy since my 3 munchkins had grown out of them.

Peering inside the Little Free Library for the first time.

The kids each chose a book to take home. One was a Spider Man sticker activity book from Comic Con! The kids were pretty stoked about that one.

When we got home we still had some more cleaning and organizing to do before grandma got into town, so we pulled even more books from out shelves to share with neighbors. It feels so good to pass books onto other people who can enjoy them once you're through with them.

Does your neighborhood have one of these Little Free Libraries? There's a cool search feature on this website if you're unsure. Learn more about setting one up in your neighborhood. This is a great way to prevent the summer slide that happens when kids don't have new books to keep reading. Even though I LOVE books, I don't always want to be buying new books to replenish the kids' stash. And to be honest, I have a hard time remembering to return books on time to the city library and wind up having fines to pay. I can't wait to make this a regular part of our weekly activities!

UPDATE: Our neighborhood is so cool that someone else put up another Free Little Library recently. I smile every time I drive by this one because it sits on this cool barrel and just begs you to stop and exchange a book.