REVIEW: The OneStepAhead sling bookcase

It seems like most of the people who will be reading this blog are fellow Mamas, so I thought it might be nice to do a review every once in a while, of things that I have found particularly useful for my boys.  Having two of the same age means that things get a double workout!

So here we go...

I love onestepahead.com and have bought a few things from them, but this is probably my favorite so far.

http://www.onestepahead.com/catalog/product.jsp?productId=536401&cmSource=Search

In the beginning, I just had a low basket in the livingroom where I would put all of their little boardbooks.  It worked okay, but it was pretty small and of course they loved to just dump it over.  I considered getting a regular bookshelf since they have a nice bookshelf in their room, and I love it.  Unfortunately what they love is pulling every single book out and watching it fall to the floor.  I was hoping to find something that would discourage that particular activity!

A friend mentioned this bookcase, and I decided to give it a try.  It holds a lot more than you might think and for some reason doesn't seem to inspire the need to dump the entire contents!  I have the books layered three deep in most places and they are still easy to pull out and put back in again.  It's also pretty easy to stagger things so that you can see a little peek of most of the books and find things easily.  The bonus is those great storage bins below!  I had been using two smallish baskets to hold some of their loose toys, but again, the urge to dump them was great, and I was constantly picking them up or twisting my ankle on block-booby-traps.  They rarely pull the new bins completely out, but they are able to get into them pretty easily, and I can always shift toys around so that if they start getting bored with the things that are out on the floor, they can get a "rest" in the bin while something else makes an appearance.

The other great thing was the ease of assembly.  I had the whole thing together in under fifteen minutes, and it is STURDY.  I almost went all StepfordWives and ironed the canvas slings, which would have added some time, but Chris gave me a funny look when I mentioned it, so I decided to let the books remove the packing creases, and it's worked.

Hope this helps someone out there looking for a good space-efficient storage solution.  I'll add that it also looks great!