One of the first things I plan to do when we buy our next house is to put in a wall of bookshelves. To me, a home without books really isn't a home -- it's just an empty shell. I also think that bookshelves fulfill one of my favorite William Morris quotes: Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
Right now, though, our bookshelves -- while certainly useful -- are less than beautiful. We own 805 books. Yes, I know that's a huge number -- but it's much lower than it was before we moved to Murray. We weeded our collection quite a bit, down to the books that we truly loved and couldn't imagine not having on our shelves. We make sure that the books we bring into our home are ones that we want to add to the permanent collection; otherwise, we just check them out from the library or we resell them at our favorite used books store.
A quarter of that collection is in our bedroom: 234 books split among three bookshelves, 2 nightstands, and the top of my dresser.
A few notes about our shelves: the white bookshelf is almost completely YA and mostly new releases. The top of the tallest brown bookshelf features my signed books and advanced reader copies. I keep any books checked out from the library either next to my bed (on the bottom shelf next to my Sandman collection) or on top of my dresser.
We have three bookshelves in our living room, filled with 284 books. Two are behind the couch and act as a room divider and console table. I also have a great mid-century modern cabinet that holds a few books.
The girls have their own share of the collection: Cassidy has 83 books in her room, and Cami has a whopping 197. Many of the books that Cami has were passed down from Cass, and most of the books that Cass currently reads come from my own YA collection.
Eventually, I'd love to have all our books condensed into one wall of shelves. While I love the look of shelves arranged by color (our shelves in the living room were done that way at one point), it does make it harder to find the books we're looking for. I think that we'll end up arranging them into children's, YA, and adult sections, and then alphabetically within those sections. I also can't decide if I want tall shelves or if I want waist-high shelves, so that I can put art and my globe collection on top. I also need to decide if I want shelves with doors or without -- doors would mean less dusting, which I'm always a fan of, but sometimes they rattle and they add to the cost as well.
Here are some inspiration images from Pinterest that I've pinned; I seem to be drawn to rustic wood shelves or white bookshelves, such as the Expedit from Ikea. What about you -- how do you organize your bookshelves?
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