Hey everyone! How are you? I hope you’re good. Yesterday, I reorganised my bookshelves. I do that from time to time to spice things up. I don’t want to get bored with the look of them. I tried a few different ways of organising, but ultimately decided on one. Let me show you!
BEFORE
To give you an idea, I started with a shelf for my favourite books (bottom right) . The rest of my books were organised by colour in rainbow order.
* I’m sorry for the quality of some of these photos. Both the lighting and my phone were working against me and I just wanted to get on with it. *
ALPHABETICALLY BY AUTHOR
The first thing I tried was alphabetically by author. I wanted to give something that wasn’t by colour a go and this was the first thing I could think of. In the end I thought it looked quite messy. If you didn’t know, you wouldn’t think it was organised. I did like the look of the shelf with the llama, but that was it. I thus tried something else.
BY GENRE
After that, I divided my books into piles based on their genre. I thought it would be a fun idea. Based on the look of the piles though, I had a feeling I would find it too messy again. I decided not to bother putting them on my shelves and moved on to the next idea.
If you’re curious to know what each pile is, let me give you an overview.
Starting at the top, then going left and down to the pile with A Monster Calls, continuing to the right, and then the bottom row starting from the left again:
- classics
- reality with some fantastical / sci-fi elements
- non-fiction
- historical fiction
- mystery / thrillers
- fantasy (3 piles)
- contemporary (2 piles)
- dystopian
- sci-fi (2 piles)
BY RATING
Then I pondered over what it would look like if I organised by rating. I quickly realised I read a lot of these books quite some time ago, though. I would probably give them a different rating now, so where do I put them?
On to the next idea!
BY HEIGHT
Then I thought of going back to organising by height. That’s how I used to have my shelves, before the rainbow. However I came to the conclusion I have to many books with a different height to make it look pretty.
- Dutch paperbacks (already a bunch of different sizes)
- Dutch hardcovers
- UK paperbacks
- UK hardcovers
- US paperbacks
- US hardcovers
- graphic novels
- etc…
They just don’t make books the same sizes! Again, I knew it would be too messy for my liking. And thus…
THE RETURN OF THE RAINBOW
I decided to go back to organising by colour. I just love the way it looks! I mixed all my books together and started the rainbow in a different place. So in my defense, it does look different!
And that’s the end result!
What do you think of my shelves? Would you have chosen something else in the end?
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Love,
Loved the post.
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Thank you!
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Wow! I have my to be read books on my top shelves to remind me that they exist 🙂 Then keep books by the same authors together and all my classics. I don’t really have an order other than that but having them all arranged by colour looks great.
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That’s a great system you have going on! I can keep my TBR quite under control, but having it on a seperate shelf makes me feel stressed. Like it’s staring judgementally at me or something haha. As for classics I don’t have many, oops. Anyway, it sounds like an awesome system for you and everyone needs a different one based on their book collection, right?
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Yes definitely we are all different. I get that having them together can stress you i try and make them visible so I don’t forget them 😂
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That does sound logical. Hope it works!
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As far as my bookshelf organization, my top shelf is all of my favorites, and then the second shelf is the rest of my YA books. The third shelf has my poetry books stacked on one side, and the other side has my classics and nonfiction books. The last two are for all of my unread books, which there are a lot of, but they aren’t in any particular order. I guess for the most part, I organized by genre.
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It sounds like you have a great system going on! If it works for you, than it’s perfect 🙂 I really like my own style too 😉
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Yes! I love the look of the rainbow shelves, but I just don’t have enough different colored books for it 😩
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I get that struggle! My yellow section could really use some more books….
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I love organizing my books by color as well! Rainbow bookshelves are so much fun to look at! Lovely post! ❤️
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They are indeed, aren’t they? So stunning! Thank you ❤
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Me too
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