Thursday, February 19, 2009

Booking Through Thursday - Storage



I recently got new bookshelves for my room, and I'm just loving them. Spent the afternoon putting up my books and sharing it on my blog . One of my friends asked a question and I thought it would be a great BTT question. So from Tina & myself, we'd like to know "How do you arrange your books on your shelves? Is it by author, by genre, or you just put it where it falls on?"



You're asking me? Somebody who has been known to organize the closets for fun? I admit…in the past mine haven't always been too organized. It was organized where it made sense to me and I could easily find things, but for others, probably not so much. I think it was like that because I didn't have enough room for all the books, so I had to pick and choose which books were left in boxes and which got to be displayed on the bookshelves. Instead of telling you how it used to be though, I'm going to focus on how it will be. As many of you know from reading my blog, I'm converting a room to be a library in our current house. While we have the flooring in and I'm working on painting the new French doors and will finish that and paint the room this weekend, I'm not sure when we will get the bookshelves built. The problem there is money. We have 9ft ceilings and I want one wall to be bookshelves, floor to ceiling. The wall is about 14 inches long. So it's going to be expensive. However, I do have a library case. It's rather large and heavy and has glass doors. I will be putting that in there. So I will have some room to display books for a bit. (don't worry…I'll probably have pictures to show next week)


Ok..enough…onto the actually answering of the question. Here's the plan. The books will be organized by genre. In each genre they will be organized alphabetically by author's last name. I have a lot of series books, I hope to put those in series order but won't be too picky about that, depends on how it looks. I have a binder where I keep a list of the series in order so it's easy for me to figure out when I go to grab a book. The only genre where I probably won't organize by author last name is the non-fiction. I don't have a lot of those. What I do have are mostly art books and memoirs. I haven't actually figured out what to do with these yet. I think the art books will go in my library case because some are rather large. However I might also just stack them up on the floor next to my comfy chair (which I don't own yet..another expense we aren't ready to do yet). Although, I guess I could still do memoirs by last name since, well, the book is about the author. Oh, and I have several war photography books. While I would love to sit these out, young children probably shouldn't have easy access to them. I am slowly collecting a large amount of young adult books (and I still have most from when I was growing up). While I think it would be cook to organize the young adult by genre and then author, I think I'll probably just do those by author to keep things simple.


Also, here's something I started doing this year and so far I love it. I pulled out all the books I'm reading for challenges and stuck them in my library case. I don't really have them in any order (which is kinda bothering me if you really want to know..that's how weird I am about organizing). I love this because when I'm ready to pick up a new book, I always look at these first in hopes of one grabbing my attention. It's an easy way to remember what I plan to read this year. Once I have read them, I put the book somewhere else. So that area of the library case will get smaller and smaller.




So that's a rather long response….what about you guys?

10 comments:

Brooke from The Bluestocking Guide said...

I do mine by series. But I need tothink of other ways. Genre I think will work well for me.

Storage

SmilingSally said...

I Do love organization! Happy BTT.

Beth F said...

I wish I could be organized, but even if I arranged everything it wouldn't last for more than a few weeks.

Unknown said...

Beth - it's weird because I tend to leave stuff out more than the husband...like on the kitchen island etc, but once I do put it away..I need it to be organized - so all the cabinets and closets are very organized (although husband still has trouble finding stuff...it boggles my mind)

Mary (Bookfan) said...

Kris, I added another pic while you were commenting on my post. We are very similar in our organization sensibilities - although I clicked on one of my photos and could see books stacked behind the row of books on a shelf! Yikes.

Mary (Bookfan) said...

PS I love your header photo. I've been to Ireland twice and can't wait to go back!

Chrisbookarama said...

I start out with good intentions but then it all goes awry.

Unknown said...

Mary - haha! Don't worry - I was limited with bookcase space at the old house and had a habit of putting a row of hardbacks behind a row of paperbacks, just to get more on the shelf. Ireland is beautiful isn't it? We went in the winter time, I would love to go back in the summer time.

Chris - I think we all have that problem at some point. lol!

claire said...

Wow I'm jealous of your soon-to-be-finished library!! :D

Unknown said...

Bluestocking - you could do yours by genre and then by series?

Claire - Thanks! When people asked why we moved, one of the reasons I mention is because I wanted a library. haha! That always gets strange looks..but then they just aren't readers I suppose.