Desperate Twines…

I love old books.

use twine to bundle and protect your beautiful books
I love antiques; I love stories (remember my story wall in the dining room?); I taught high school literature, and my husband and I both come from families of book lovers. We were destined to have a house overfilled with books.
In past homes, we’ve sprinkled our old, beautiful books throughout the house for display purposes, but our current home has what was originally a formal sitting room, I think, complete with an entire wall of built-in shelves.
These shelves change often weekly daily (and sometimes hourly!). The constant fluctuation is usually due to my removing something to decorate elsewhere in the house (love shopping my own house for decor – it’s free!). Then, just for kicks, I rearrange. Until a few nights ago when necessity, in the form of an eleven-month old, reared its ugly cute head. Twice last week, I discovered my son with torn pages from my beautiful books sticking to his chin.
Eventually, Mr. Pax and I are planning to close in the bottom two shelves to hide some office supplies and such, but I know that will take some time, and I didn’t want the shelves to be naked until then. Fortunately, I had an epiphany. If the books were tied into bundles, like here on my mantle:
… my son would not be able to open them to tear out pages. So I set to work (around 11:30pm, hence the horrible pictures): sorting by age (in order to put the oldest, most valuable ones out of reach) and grouping by size: 
In the process, I rediscovered many of our books, like this pair from 1904:
I found two thicknesses of twine and tackled all the books within reach. It may not be ideal, but it seems a reasonable way to childproof without completely sacrificing style.
What creative ways have you decorated around your kids or pets?

 

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One Comment

  1. Right at this moment, Charlotte is pulling apart paperback novels. Our good stuff will be placed up high!

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