As I mentioned in my post yesterday, last weekend I spent quite a bit of time working on our main bookshelves in the living room. We have two right next to each other; the tall one (part of which is pictured above) and then a smaller one next to it. The tall one has five shelves while the smaller has three. We went through and decided what textbooks or anything else we did not need or want anymore, and I sold those off to Half Price Books. Then I went about putting books on the shelves. I decided to put hardcovers on the tall one, and paperbacks on the smaller. However, I still don't have nearly enough shelf space. The paperbacks are double stacked, and I have even more books in my craft room on shelves in there...yikes!
Now, I think that the shelves already look so much better, but the only part I'm really happy with is the very top of the tall bookshelf, which you can see in the picture above. I have our Harry Potter books, my Legend trilogy box set, along with some newer releases on my TBR shelf, and a little bit of decor. I think I will leave those that way for now...
So, the main point of this post is to figure out how I should go about actually organizing the books. Right now they are just randomly placed, and it's driving me a bit crazy. I thought I would ask for opinions from you guys! How do you organize your own shelves? How do you think that I should do it? Color-coded, alphabetically by title or author, by genre? Should I keep my series together, or should I separate them? Should I keep my TBR and Read books together? HELP! I would really love your opinions, so let's talk about it in the comments below! :]
I am a piler - all over the place LOL. I love your Wall-E!
ReplyDeleteMissie @ A Flurry of Ponderings
My fiance keeps reorganizing all our books. I had them with similar heights together kind of randomly, and he changed them first to organized by color and now to alphabetically by author. Im not sure I like either one because to me it doesnt look neat with random heights together and by color meant separating series. Alphabetically makes it really easy to find a book though. <3 Bee @ Bee Reads Books
ReplyDeleteOrganization is also my problem. But currently, my books are organized by genre.
ReplyDeleteMine are separated into genre, then into series within each genre. I do keep series together. Because space is a premium, I do stack paperbacks lying flat into piles. In my book cases I can get three layers of piled paperbacks on each shelf. The ones in the back, deepest in are usually the ones that I've read and just want to keep. Someday, when there is more money to do it, I'll get a better system with more bookcases. But for now this works and I can usually find a book I want without too much trouble.
ReplyDeleteI like how you've got some deco along with your books.
My shelves are such a mess right now, I need to do some organization pretty soon. I love the look of color coded organization but I'm so OCD that I have to have my series together and I like to keep my authors together too, so I don't know if I could handle color coding them and mixing them up haha.
ReplyDeleteTimely post for me because I really need to spend this weekend on organizing my bookcases. Which will mostly consist of pulling off the books I won't re-read and don't want to even look at - and trying to figure out where to put those two hardback copies I've got of Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince. Because, seriously, I don't think they'll fit on any of my shelves.
ReplyDeleteCurrently, my books are organized by height more than anything else - because so many of my shelves aren't tall enough for hardback books - and also by how much I liked the book. Those aforementioned 'get rid of' books? They're crammed over into the far corner while the ones I really like are more at eye level. A few special series get shelves all to themselves.