Extreme Organizing - Books

I think most people have a hard time getting rid of books unless they are selling them. I know I had a hard time getting rid of some books, but maybe this post will help! My husband and I have two book shelves. One tall book shelf in the living room and one in the bedroom. The one in the bed room only has my husbands books so I won't organize that one unless my husband wants to. The shelf in the living room I am using three shelves out of the five to put my books on them. 

I took all of my books off of the shelf and made a pile in the middle of the living room. While the shelves were empty I dusted them (It needed to be dusted like really bad...). I put my books into categories like the list below! You can customize your categories depending on what kind of books you have. 

• Fiction
• Non-Fiction
• Magazines
• Cook Books
• Resources
• Textbooks
• Bibles & Devotionals
• Coloring books

Before

First Shelf

I started organizing my fictional books first. I kept the classics because I want my kids to read them when they are older and I know I would want to read them again. Some of the classics I kept included the Chronicles of Narnia and the Lord of the Rings. I know some people organize their books by the author, alphabetical, or even color, but I organized them by category, size of the book, and the author. I put the big books in the back and put the smaller ones in the front of the big books so you can see both. By doing so you can create more space on your book shelves as well! 

For the non-fiction, I realized I didn't have too many and they were all books that I have not read yet. I don't even know if this was a good idea or not, but I organized them by the order I wanted to read them in. After I read them I will most likely organize them like I did with the fictional books. Since I had space on the right side of the shelf I decided to put my magazines there. The magazines are tall and big so it looked much better on the end of the shelf than in the middle. I used to keep all of my magazines that I had like Seventeen, Glamour, and Vogue. I tossed them all out because was I really going to read them again? Probably not... Besides I feel like most of the magazines were just ad pages with hardly any content! The magazines I did decide to keep were my fashion magazines I got in Japan that I still really enjoy looking over once in awhile and a few wedding magazines I had gotten while I was engaged. The magazines I kept still bring back happy memories for me :) 

Second Shelf

For my second shelf I decided to put the books that I use as resources. The resource books included cook books, marriage books, books about babies, kids, teens, and textbooks. I also put my Bibles and devotionals on this shelf as well.

Since my cookbooks are pretty tall I placed them all the way to the left (plus easier access for when I meal plan) and then organized my resource books in order by life events. For example, marriage related books, baby related books, children related books, teen related books, and college textbooks. My husband and I were both Psychology majors in college so we took a lot of the same classes. We were dating in college so we got the advantage of only getting one copy of the textbook instead of each getting our own copy (one way to save money haha!). All out of all of the textbooks we kept from our college days, I decided to only keep one of them and it was our abnormal psychology textbook. This was one class I truly enjoyed and I still have a lot of interest in. I want to eventually get my Masters in counseling so I thought it would be best to hold on to it anyways. As far as the rest of the textbooks I handed them all to my husband to see if he wanted to keep any in case my husband still wanted them for some reason.

Growing up in a Christian home I had a lot of Bibles. From Baby's first Bible, Children's Bible, Teen Bible, to the "regular" Bible. I also had many different translations of the Bible too. The only Bibles I decided to keep were my one study Bible that my husband gave me that I really enjoy studying, one small Bible that I can take with me on trips, and my one and only Japanese Bible. My little Bible and Japanese Bible are both pretty small so I placed them in front of the taller books. Both the tall books and the Bibles are both visible and still look neat. For my study Bible, I kept it on my coffee table along with my journal notebook.

Finally, for my coloring books or other books that did not fit into categories listed above I placed them next to my magazines. Also, like the picture above if you have anything on the shelf that is not a book move it to where it belongs. I think placing a candle or picture would be fine (keep it simple with only one or two items) as long as it does not block any books.

After organizing, I had some space in between my books so I moved the books I had originally put in front to the empty space to fill the shelf. Before I organized my books I had taken up three shelves, but I got it down to two! All of the books I did not want or never saw myself reading, I donated them to Goodwill or gave them away to someone who would enjoy them!

After!

Next Up! Organizing your papers!

♥ Hannah