I’ve been wanting for years to do a color-coordinated bookcase. I even had two colored shelves (in two different bookcases, for some reason.) But it seemed like such a huge undertaking, and when I looked at all my book spines, I couldn’t see how I could manage it—it always seemed like I had SO many black spines and not enough color.
When I recently got rid of a bunch of books, though, I decided it was time to organize anyway, so why not at least try? And I am SO happy with the results!
Taking good pictures was a bit of a trick. Unfortunately, I don’t get tons of natural light in my bedroom, and the bookcase that I chose to color-coordinate (the one I can stare at adoringly from in my bed) is really far away from the windows. In addition, my quarter-sawn oak bookcases are dark and don’t show off the colors nearly as well as white ones would. (But I LOVE my bookcases, and they match my bedroom set beautifully—my bedroom has the nicest furniture in my house by a mile). One solution that I came up with that helps A LOT is pushing all of the books to the front of the bookcase instead of the back. This also makes the books line up a little nicer. Still, I couldn’t rely only on natural light, which I know everyone who knows anything about Bookstagram would insist is best. Hey, I tried!
Here’s the unveiling:
In order to get this effect, I had to … gasp … separate series. This was kind of hard to convince myself to do, but it’s worth it!
My other two bookcases aren’t nearly as interesting, but I thought I’d take some pictures anyway. I organized them with a shelf for review books and one for middle grade. I then tried to keep books I’ve already read mostly together and kept the vestiges of series together too. 🙂
This last bookcase is still overcrowded. Even after I got rid of more books (and put some downstairs in the office bookcase) I still had too many to fit well. As you can see, there’s still a lot of stacking going on here. This bookcase is in the least conspicuous spot in the room, so it’s the messiest. Once I get rid of a TON of homeschooling books in the downstairs office, I’ll have more space to stretch out. 🙂
(This was also the hardest bookcase to get a decent picture of because of its location—the bookcase itself looks just like the other two, so I focused on the shelves. You get the idea, at least.
I also decided to catalog all my books in Goodreads so that it would be more accurate as far as the books I own. Most of the books were already listed there, but it’s not completely up to date, and I wanted to fix that. I created shelves in Goodreads for each bookcase so that I would know (roughly) where to find them! I’m still in the process of going through all of them, though. It’s going to take me a little while, since there are lots of books!
Have you ever done a major bookcase reorganization? How did you decide to organize your books? I want to know!
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