My husband and I are so excited to live in our new city of Atlanta that allows us to walk to all of our daily conveniences. We’ve been taking advantage of that during our first week – whether that’s been walking to Sevananda’s Natural Food Market or to the Flying Biscuit for Sunday brunch. Along our walking adventures we have been pleasantly surprised to find these tiny libraries in our neighbors’ yards. Mind you, books in any form jump out to my writer husband. So seeing shelves of books contained in these handmade mini-house structures in the front of homes definitely stopped us in our tracks.

After unpacking 30-plus boxes of books from our recent move, I knew we just found a new bookshelf solution to house those books that were stacking up on our floor. Instead of finding a recycling solution for these books, we now have a way to share them with our new neighbors.

The organization is called Little Free Library, a nonprofit group with a mission to build community and promote literacy. Little Free Library creates a dozen or so models (and also builds customized versions) that you can purchase and install in your front yard. The best part is all but two models (to my count) are made from recycled wood. You can register your library on their website so that anyone in your community can locate a Little Free Library nearest to them.  And even better, you can build your own library model; they encourage you to use recycled materials such as an old microwave oven or unwanted cabinet (their site also offers some great suggestions on partnering with local Boy or Girl Scout troops to build one as a community service project).

Since neither my husband nor I are great with power tools, we’ll be ordering the Essential model. We can’t wait to stack the shelf with our books and make new friends in the neighborhood.