Lost Book, Found

Two years ago, I moved 5 bookshelves into the library in my office. I was stressed at the time, so I filled all the shelves randomly with the full intention of coming back soon and organizing them.

That never happened.

The last few weeks, I've been desperately looking for a book (Save the Cat) to no avail despite combing through every shelf multiple times. Then, I proceeded to turn the house upside down, thinking it must be in a box or a drawer or a pile somewhere.

After a lot of that, I finally got desperate enough to start organizing my shelves, at least to some small degree. I cleared off one shelf for self-help books, another for picture books, and another for writing manuals and how-to's, etc. After about 45 minutes of that, lo and behold, I found the book I was looking for at the far end of one of the lower shelves.

I've been working on organizing a lot more than my books, and I'll be talking more about that in future posts, but I wanted to share this one small triumph with you today.

So, how do you organize your bookshelf? By type? Size? Color-coded? Alphabetically? Or some other way I haven't thought of yet? I'd like to get some ideas for mine as I fine-tune it. :o)

4 comments:

  1. Ideally, I'd have enough room and bookshelves to have all of my books here with me.

    Ideally.

    At one time, I did. This was in my mom's last house. I had the books semi-organized. My B&N classics were all together and organized alphabetically within format, hardcover vs. paperback. Literature was in its own group then my reference library. Literature was by author and I think that the B&N classics were as well. The reference library went largely by category: heraldry, Egypt, mythology, etc.

    Nowadays with my little bookshelf, it's just by category: reference for my fiction writing (be it world-building, technical, etc), religion, school, then literature.

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  2. Once upon a time, my books were organized. Then, I bought more. =P

    Sadly, I'm not as organized as I need to be. I should reorganize mine. I should also winnow through them!

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  3. I have a very loose organization system when it comes to books - I tend to keep things of the same general category together.

    I don't think I could ever line them up alphabetically - probably because after working at a library as a teengaer I don't ever want to have to make sure books are in the right order again!

    Just started "Save the Cat" this morning and I'm liking it all already!

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  4. Stephanie, thanks for sharing your system. It sounds like it's working for you, even though the scale is smaller than it once was.

    Laura, I have totally BTDT, Got the T-Shirt. Good luck on that whole winnowing down thing. I should probably do it too, but I hate parting with my babies!

    Stacy, I'm with you on that. I've spent time organizing books at the school library, and it' frustrating how one book in the wrong place can throw them all off. I'm of the grouping-them-by-category mind as well.

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