19 February 2009

Booking Through Thursday: Storage

This week’s question is suggested by Kat:

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?”

My system is rather on the chaotic side, largely because there are bookshelves all over the house. Craft-related books are kept in a cupboard along with all my supplies. Old textbooks are dumped in the spare room/junk room. After that it gets more complicated. One side of the bookcase in the family room is dedicated to my fiction, with classics first then everything else (all alphabetically by author). The overflow has been relegated to shelves in the living room; since I spend more time in the family room than the living room, the former contains my favourites and the latter those I’m less likely to be re-reading anytime soon. Another set of living room shelves houses my encyclopaedias, along with all my mother’s non-fiction. The other half of the family room bookcase holds her fiction, except for the bottom shelf, which is where I keep my small collection of non-fiction (arranged in descending order of size) and the cardboard box filled with my TBR pile. On top of that, there’s books-in-progress, read-but-yet-to-be-shelved books, and books we’ve borrowed from the library and each other strewn across shelves, tables, kitchen benchtops, sofas, and floors. In fact the only rooms in the house that don’t see books are the bathroom and the laundry.

Amazingly, I know where everything is.

5 comments:

jlshall said...

We don't have books in the bathrooms either, mainly just because our bathrooms are rather tiny. But I do have books in the laundry room since the laundry space is in the kitchen, and all my cookbooks are there. Well, you never know when you might want something tasty to read while waiting for that last load to dry!

SmilingSally said...

lol But the bathroom is The Reading Room! I always keep Reader's Digest there.

Dorte H said...

We have books in several rooms. We have a system for fiction, though. In what we call ´the library´ (my husband´s former office) we keep fiction which is not crime, arranged alphabetically by author. In my own study I keep my 500 crime novels, also in alphabetical order.
But of course I always have a pile next to my bed, in the living room and in our cottage ;)

claire said...

I don't put books in the bathroom either, because I don't like them getting wet. I have a pet peeve with pages that have been wet and then dried warped. :)

Mary (Bookfan) said...

I organize by author and/or genre.

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