When it comes to organizing, one of my favorite areas is a bookshelf. There is so much potential and so many options on how to do it. If you feel like you need to get started organizing your entire house, break into rooms, or even just one small area in a room at a time. And it's totally okay to just work on a single drawer or a single bookshelf. So that being said, here's some tips for organizing your books.
Purge
First, you really have to take everything off the shelves so you can see what you're working with. And before you even start organizing, you absolutely MUST purge. Go one by one, holding each book and making a decision. Will you read this book again? Is there someone you can give it to instead? Why have you held onto it for so long? Make a pile (or fill a box) with any books you are going to donate or give away. You need to eliminate the excess first.
Categorize
So some people organizing books by category, some organize by color, some organize by size, but however you choose to do it, make sure that before you put things back on shelves, you already have determined how you'll categorize it all. Color is a very fun way to do it because it leaves your shelves looking beautiful. For me, I honestly don't have that many cool colors. Most of mine are black or white spines, so I choose to organize mine by category. I make little groupings on each shelf like a stack of novels, a row of home decor books, reference books for herbs and gardening, etc.
Stack
You can arrange your books in a line standing up on certain shelves and on others you can make little stacks and even add a fun piece of decor on top. I stacked all of my gardening books in a pile and put a cute ceramic owl on top of the stack.
Use some as Decor
There are some books that are just so pretty. So I use those as decoration year round. Sometimes I just love the patterns and colors on the spine and it just so happens that home decor books usually have really pretty spines so they are great AS home decor themselves.
Leave Space
Leave a little space on your shelves for new books you may get it or just so it has some breathing room. Also, make sure to revisit your book collection every year or so to see if there's anything you can get rid of or even rearrange.
Do you have organized bookshelves? How do you do it?
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