I live with my parents, and my books are scattered throughout the house on the various bookshelves (we have a wall of bookshelves in the study, plus some in other rooms). I have a loose system based broadly on either subject matter or author. I put the books from the same author together (Isobelle Carmody is starting to push other authors off the shelf), but beyond that it's based really on how high the shelf is and where in the house was there space / what books did I own when I organised that bookshelf. I know where stuff is and that works for me!
Plus I don't tend to buy books much, I borrow them from the library or my friends. If I really like the book I'll put it on my list of things I'd like to own (which is on google docs and shared with my family, but annoyingly they don't seem to follow it much) and if I see it for something like $10 I'll buy it. But generally I'm too cheap to buy many books!
Gah - it's turned into a big old mess!
I've roughly shoved all my books onto the shelves i have allocated to various genres/book sizes/authors - and there's an annoying amount of uneven double stacking going on - some shelves are full to bursting and others stuggling to reach single stack rows.
I'm starting to wonder whether it would be better to buy more books to fill the emptier shelves (rather than redistribute the books - my first thought is more fun ...)
Then there's the bookshelf in my bedroom, which other than my Enid Blyton shelf, is a comlpete mess! I'm making space for my growing manga collection, but otherwise it's my 'leftover' bookshelf and all the stuff on it doesn't quite fit with each other. It's very frustrating ...
You could get some of those shelf-stacker things, they're pretty cheap, and then you could have two shelves within one for where you have too many books that you want all on the one shelf. It would be pretty easy and much quicker than redistributing! I mean like the ones people put in their kitchen cupboards for plates and stuff. If you lie the books down with their spines facing outwards it could work. Just an idea! And I think definitely buy more books to fill the spaces - book buying is the best type of splurge ever :P
My bookshelves... well all my books that I love reading seem to always end up on the floor next to my bed, but when I clean up I have them in alphebetical order by authors last name. Any books I know I will never read again I get rid of, because I don't have the room to keep them. Stops it cluttering anyway. I have created little tags that go in my shelf for different genres so all my favourite books (besides the ones on the floor) are on the shelf in my bedroom.
11 years ago
Sat May 19 2012, 11:39am
We've just moved as well, and I'm yet to unpack any books. I'm not sure how I want them organised any more since the bookshelf configuration has changed. Many of you saw it when you were at our old place in November last year - one bookshelf for DVDs, the other in the lounge for books that Paul and I either consider important/special, or are by authors we both read and enjoy.
The other two bookshelves were in the spare room; one for Paul, one for me. The rest of mine that I couldn't fit on that shelf were piled beside it on the floor, just because I hadn't figured out if I should store them or find a way to stack them. And then we have more in plastic containers - books that we probably won't read again but don't want to get rid of.
The order on the shelves was bonkers; by how much we like the author, then by series, chronologically. Non-fiction always gets the lower shelves, and then, they're sorted by theme - travel books by country, textbooks by subject. It's easy to tell which authors we both favour because our favourites are in direct line-of-sight when you first look at the shelf.
But I'm not sure how to organise them any more. Paul and I will go through the boxes eventually, I guess, and figure it out. We have 2 bookshelves in the lounge now for books (and the 3rd is DVDs), so it means we can put more of our favourites out on display. I suspect it'll end up being like the spare-room bookshelves; one for Paul, one for me.
Nef you should look at getting some plastic containers for the books you don't want displayed but want to keep safe. You can get them at Bunnings quite cheaply. We have tons of them, and many of them filled with books. They're stackable, and a way to keep it organised, and make it extremely easy to move quickly, because they're already packed :P
Ah, excellent. It's nice to see I'm not the only one who also uses my bookshelf as a place to stuff miscellaneous soft toys.
I need a new bookshelf! I realised that if I organised my books out of order then they would all fit, but since I'm CDO about my books, putting them out of order just isn't an option. I keep buying books that only just fit in their places, and I am really worried that by squeezing them in I'll damage them!
And I only have a small cabinet to put all my other things in. To be quite honest, my bookshelves are the main attraction of my room, therefore if it's not on the floor I have absolutely nowhere to put my crap. My textbooks live on the floor :( I find that my green bookshelf contains the most crap. I'll put something there and there it'll remains, gathering dust, for a few years until I decide to move it haha
I have no dresser in my room because I needed the space for bookshelves.
I have 25-30 apple boxes full of books in my basement (mostly children's books and text books that I'm saving for my kids/til I go back to school and need them again. In my room I have three bookcases that are sorted by genre/style of writing. For example, I have my shelf of Arthurian books, I have my shelf of ya fiction, sorted further by fiction, fantasy, romance. I have my little bookshelf, which is full of non-fiction and reference books, my shelf of Canadian history non fiction and fiction, and a shelf of journals for all my own writing. Then there's the pile of books next to my bed that I am currently reading.
Working in a bookstore is killing my shelf space though. It's terrible how much overflow I have.
My shelf is not dissimilar to Sionainn's - books everywhere and anyway they will stack. My brother and I have shared a bookcase since we were kids, and it is filled with many things that don't get used and has boardgames up the top. I have always had one shelf that was just mine, and the books used to be arranged alphabetically by author, series/book name, series order; however, as KaylanR said one can fit more if the order doesn't matters. So as much as possible I have series and auther grouped together, but just in whatever way fits. This means rearranging a little everytime I start a new book. My family also has another bookshelf where I put any series that both my mother and I have read - between Isobelle Carmody and Ian Irvine, that was a big help for my shelf.