What do you get the professional organizer who has doesn’t want anything? (I realize I tend to be very hard to shop for!) How about custom-made bookshelves? That’s what my sweet husband Chad (pictured) made for me recently.
Chad designed these shelves, prepared the wood, and did all of the metal work himself. The wood is myrtlewood, which my father-in-law Bruce logged from his property down in Southern Oregon. This makes these shelves very dear to me!
They now form our reading nook on the top level of our house. My son has a place to store all of his books, while I have a place to display my gnome collection.
Bookshelves can look messy fast. Here are tips I share with my organizing clients for making the best use of their bookshelves:
- Always sort through and pare down your book collection first. There’s no point in using up precious bookshelf real estate to store books you never read.
- Think like a librarian, and separate your books into categories. It can be as simple as dividing them into “fiction” and “non-fiction.” Designate separate shelves for each category. In the photo above, the adult non-fiction is on the top shelf, the kids’ books are on the middle two shelves, and the adult fiction is on the bottom shelf. It makes it super easy to find things!
- Bookshelves are great places to store things besides books, such as collections or family memorabilia (bottom left shelf in picture). I put the family photo albums and a box of loose photos on the shelves because I think we are more likely to look at them this way.
- Leave EXTRA SPACE on your bookshelves. I can’t stress this enough. You will most likely get more books in the future, so you need to leave room for growth.
I’m really pleased with our bookshelves, and had a lot of fun organizing the books (big surprise there, right?) Happy Organizing, everyone!
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