If you’re anything like me, you probably have books up to your eyeballs. Ones you’ve already read, ones you started to read but not finished and some you haven’t even opened yet. I imagine you have books scattered here, there and everywhere around your house that you haven’t managed to find a home for yet. That’s how you have ended up here, right? Thankfully for you, I have tried out all sorts of ways of arranging my books. I’m here to share with you my top tips on how to organise your bookshelf.
Ways to Organise your Bookshelf
Just like books, everyone is different, we have different preferences on how we like our books to be organised and laid out. I have tried and tested various ways to organise my bookshelf. From alphabetical, to authors, to size order, to genre of book, I have tried them all. So let me share with you how I did it so that you can pick what works best for you. First things first, gather all your books and let’s get started.
Option number 1, alphabetical, look at all the titles of your books and sort accordingly. Organising your books this way is going to make it easy for you to skim across all your books and pick out the one you want to read. This way also works really well if you are stacking all your books up right with the spines facing out. In addition, I have to admit it’s rather satisfying having your books this way. A disadvantage I found to this though, is that you have a whole mix of genres and authors.
Option number 2, categorised by author, if you have a favourite few authors this way is really effective. Go through your books and separate them into piles by the same author. If you want you can even combine option 1 with this once you have all your different author piles. That way not only are you books written by the same person, you can scan through their titles in an easy manner. Alternatively, you can order each author’s books by release date.
Option number 3, size ordered. This option can be more aesthetically pleasing and allows you to play around with different styles on your bookshelf. You can have some upright, some laying down like a pyramid. You could combine this with option 2 and have your books by Author and in size order.
Option number 4, book genre. Separate your books into categories, fiction, non fiction, graphic novels, recipe books etc. This way of organising will make your next read choice a little bit easier, depending on what you feel like reading that day. You can go straight to the section of the type of book you want and pick away. Again this option could be combined with one of the ones above.
Bonus option, organised by Read, Reading and To Be Read. Again, separate your books into the 3 piles and put them on the shelf if this order. That way, you know where you are with your books. This is also an easy way to keep on top of your organisation as you can just move the book to the relevant category if it changes status.
How to Organise a Rainbow Bookshelf
Rainbow bookshelves are for those who like a bit of colour in their lives. Rainbow bookshelves can be very aesthetically pleasing and feel like you have a colour chart within your home. If you have a lot of colourful books in your collection, you can arrange them into a colour fade. Collect all your books of a similar colour and sort them darkest to lightest, or vice versa.
If you have enough variety, seven colour piles would give you the ultimate aesthetic look, however if you have less it will still work. Depending on your style will depend on the colour theme you go for. It can be a classic rainbow, or you could mix it up to your taste. For more inspiration google ‘rainbow bookshelves’ and this will give you an idea on how you’d like it to look.
Decluttering your Bookshelf
There comes a time in every book reader’s life where they say to themselves “I have too many books”. Now you may say “can you really have too many?” Which is a good point, however that can be contradictory when you run out of places to store them.
At that point a decluttering session is overdue. Now I know it can be difficult to say goodbye to books but sometimes it needs to be done. That doesn’t mean it’s the end of the book’s life, you could pass it on to a friend who is yet to read it. World of Books is a great app to upload and sell your preloved books, simply scan, send and receive cash for your old books.
When it comes to decluttering, it’s best to break it down into categories, read, reading and unread. Once you’ve done that, you only really need to focus on decluttering one of those piles, the Read pile. It’s time to part ways and donate those books, pass them on for someone else to enjoy, take them to a secondhand book store or help a small business. The good news is, this clears room for new books and what reader doesn’t love a new book? Think back to the one-in-one-out rule of decluttering.
Now you can go through the other two piles and work through those. You may have started reading a book and just can’t get into it, with these, you’ll need to be a little more ruthless. Unfortunately, every book can’t click with us, so you know what to do, pass it on to someone else it might. Trust me, I know this will feel like a daunting task, but once it’s done, you’ll feel so much better about yourself and the space available.
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