Books, like clothes, cars, and homes, are reflections of your personality and perhaps much more. Books map your history, reflect your tastes, and hold emotional moments between the covers. They open your minds and take you to places you’ve never been to. It’s guts-wrenching to give them away, even when you run out of storage space. Excess begets chaos, and finding the time to read is even harder when you can’t get your hands on the book you know you have somewhere.
Let this months’ first décor project be to edit and then organize your collection. Give your bookshelves a serious reassessment. What do you keep? What do you toss? As much as you would like to cling to all the books you’ve acquired over the years, donate the ones you haven’t read in a while or know won’t read again.[break]
You have to be both careful and ruthless as you tend to your personal library. If you don’t know where to start, try asking yourself some crucial questions. Have you owned it without reading it for less than two years? If so, give it away. Was it a gift, inscribed by an old friend or even the author? Don’t give a book like this away; it’s a literary roadmap to your past. Would you recommend the book to a friend? If so, it’s okay to keep one copy for yourself and to give the other away.
Photo Courtesy: Arjun Shah
After you’ve decided what to keep and what to give away, it’ll be much easier to tackle your books and get them in order. Once you can find your books, you have a fighting chance of enjoying them. The Week shares some tips booklovers use to keep their precious possessions organized.
Identify the keepers
Empty your shelves, grouping books into categories you would find in a library or bookstore (biography, poetry, fiction, self-help) on the floor. Does the size of each pile reflect your interests and goals now? Hold on to works that made lasting impressions, the two or three best reference books on any topic, the classics, your favorite authors, signed volumes, and all new books until you’ve had a chance to read them or for one year, whichever comes first. The rest can be given away as gifts, or you can even choose to donate them to the school you attended or to the local library. Let someone enjoy them instead of letting them gather dust on your shelves.
Rearrange your shelves
Once you’ve decided what stays and what goes, you can start planning the layout of your library. If bookcases live all over the house, assign categories to specific rooms. Consider both the available space and where you read. For instance, biographies in the living room, reference works in the study. Arrange books in each category alphabetically by author or subject. If your shelf space is limited, group books by size. You can also choose to arrange the volumes by the colors of their spines. You can arrange them chromatically across a whole bookshelf or arrange them in color blocks. And you can have shelves where you alternate chunks of black and white so it looks like stripes. Rainbow hues can really spice up a room, and color coding your books adds order to a shelf that is jam-packed with hardbacks and paperbacks.
Expand your storage
You don’t have to limit yourself to boring old bookshelves to store your tomes. Books can look great anywhere. But if you have the budget, get a little creative and try framing a window, fireplace, or doorway with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Narrow shelves work well in a hallway without cramping your space. Try making storage shelves in odd-shaped areas, around corners and under stairs. You can also use small bookshelves as end tables in your living room or bedroom. Though most of us arrange our books standing upright, stacks can be an aesthetically pleasing way to go, especially for a smaller book collection. This method is physically better for the books, so it’s something to consider seriously if you have any old or rare books. Don’t be conventional about where you can store books. Keep it anywhere and everywhere. All you have to do is be a little creative.
Balance books with decorative items
If you have some space to spare, throw some decorative items into the mix. Vases, statues and framed art are a few decor suggestions. By mixing knickknacks with books, you can make an interesting display without much effort. It will make your décor pop. If you don’t own many books, use the shelf as a display area for your favorite collectibles. If you desperately need shelving to hold your large book collection, fill it up, but try color coding the books to make a design statement. With a little effort, even the most practical of bookcases can add personality to your space. Borrow a trick from interior designers: Inside a bookcase, use paint that’s a couple shades deeper than the room color.
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