I'll confess that though I write for Apartment Therapy, I am basically a cluttery person who has more trouble editing her home than editing her posts! Looking around my house last month in preparation for spring cleaning, I realized that a lot of the mess in my living room could be eliminated by dealing with my out-of-control book situation. I've been fortunate enough to get involved with book reviewing online which means I have a steady influx of books from publishers arriving by mail, but the books shoved willy-nilly onto shelves and the towering stacks of to-be-read and to-be-reviewed were threatening to overwhelm my small apartment.
For me, the answer has been to integrate technology with an eye toward changing the way I think about books. I've always been a book hoarder- I still have my entire childhood library on shelves in my mom's apartment. On the few occasions in the past that I donated books, I inevitably came to regret it when for some reason dimly remembered plot details would come to mind for books whose titles I could not recall. I tend to remember covers so when the books are on the shelf, I can always track them down, but once they leave the house, all bets are off.
The solution? Online book cataloging. There are several programs and sites out there that allow users to catalog your books. My personal favorite is LibraryThing but I also have an account on Goodreads, and I've heard marvelous things about Delicious Library, sadly (for me at least) only available for Mac owners. I will confess that the initial work to enter the books is time consuming, but the result is well worth the effort. I made use of the tag feature in Library Thing to virtually organize my books, a system I am now in the process of translating to my physical bookshelves.
I have discovered that knowing a permanent record exists that a book was once a part of my collection makes it easier to let go of the books that I no longer need (non-fiction) or didn't really enjoy (fiction). I now maintain a book outbox, and either donate those books to my local library sale or list them on BookMooch or Paperback Swap to be sent out to readers who do want them. Slowly but surely my shelves are being purged and organized; by the end of the season, I hope to organized enough to justify purchasing the bookshelf labels pictured above as a reward for all my hard work. When I'm all done, I'll certainly share a picture of my newly organized library.
I would love to hear from other bibliophiles about alternative ways to impose order on the book chaos. For the record, my old solution was just to buy another bookcase, but now that I'm out of available wall space, I'm on the hunt for better ways to address the problem!
Image: Colleen Quinn.
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As a long time reader, its nice to hear that one member of the AT editorial staff actually keeps books.
Thanks for the info-- I, too, still have my extensive childhood book collection (and so many titles that I've picked up since). I've been sorting through boxes, but have trouble deciding what to part with, so maybe that's not the best option for me right now. Even with the clutter, I was envying the shelf space in the photo above, but I suppose the grass is always greener... Wish I was the sort of person to offer advice here instead, but I'll be looking into online cataloging as soon as possible!
Right, Original A, I'm always horrified by the suggestion of getting rid of books once you've read them. Why not go to the library, in that case? When I love a book I want to keep it close forever, and I love almost every book I read, so that's why I buy them. I keep my bookshelves from becoming chaotic by not getting too many of them, just what I'll be able to read in the not to near future. Hard to lose control that way!
I had custom bookshelves built that are deeper than usual - they accommodate two depths of books! The books that are most attractive and that I reread most often are in front, and the books that I reread occasionally or hang on to for sentimental reasons (my first romance novel, given to me by my usually prudish grandmother) go in the back, accessible when I want them. I keep them grouped by subject, and purge every so often when it's time to rearrange/restyle the shelves (they hold more than just books). To keep them attractive, the books within subjects are grouped by color, so those red-linen covered Barnes and Noble Classics editions all go together, as do the Modern Library grey linen covered ones. I try to change up how I position the books, too. Some books lie on their sides and act as bookends, often with an object on top to weight them, while others stand up like soldiers. I try to cull the herd, so to speak, every year, at least, so it doesn't get overwhelming. And if I'm low on cash, off to Half Price Books I go to sell the loot and get money for new end tables, etc...
I use Bookpedia. There was a reason I decided against DL but I don't remember what it was. I especially like the online cataloguing because now I have a record for insurance purposes. Also, it can't be uploaded to my ipod, which means I will never again buy duplicates!
I used to haul all kinds of books from home to home to home. Heavy, dusty books with lots of good memories. But during one move I realized the only time I opened most of those books was whenever I packed them for the next move. I understand keeping rare books, particularly sentimental books, reference books (like cooking and gardening), but for the life of me, I cannot understand keeping college texts, magazines, novels, biographies, etcetera. Libraries for the real thing and online libraries for softcopies have been such a liberation for me. I read a book and give it away. I use epicurious for most of my cookbook needs. And I have a handful of coffee table books and other reference books (my scrabble dictionary is a keeper), but sheesh. I can no longer fathom decorating around them, dealing with the dust they create, and --mercy me -- ever having to pack them up and move them again.
I'm also on LibraryThing and I love it: $25 for a lifetime subscription that allows me to catalog an unlimited number of books, and allows me to satisfy my inner book nerd by cataloging the exact editions I possess- even to scan in my own personal covers! I'm on BookMooch too- great source for tracking down new copies of childhood favorites or of books I somehow lost over the years...
I'd like to share my favorite way to share the unfortunate purged books. In my neighborhood, during the summer months, people put out boxes of their no-longer-wanted books on the curb for passer-by's to choose from (nearly 1/3 of my book collection comes from such boxes).
More often than not- there's nothing left at the end of the day. (and whatever is left at the end of the day could conceivably be donated to goodwill.)
Share the love!
I love GoodReads. I need to get around to actually cataloging all of my books but it's nice to have a list of the recent ones I've read.
I have to say -- some years ago I moved to a place that was much smaller than the place before, and I got rid of a lot of books (donated to various places). I have regretted it ever since. I would have done better to have kept them in boxes until I moved again ... ah, well, what's done is done. But I was afraid when I started the article that it was going to recommend covering all my books in gradually deepening shades of (say) coral, with no titles, but thank goodness no. I like the Strand's website, actually. They have a huge selection and a really varied source of supply so there's a good shot at finding what you want, and it helps keep the Strand in business which I regard as contributing to my quality of life.
I'm a librarian (and a cataloger at that), and I also find that keeping track of my collection is difficult. I like GoodReads because I like to keep track of what I've read, whether it's on my shelf at home or something I picked up at the library or borrowed from a friend. Although books are hard to constantly pack up and decorate around, they are friends that I treasure forever- I really envy the kind of shelf space in the picture above!
@KIMG: I keep my books and, yes, lug them from apartment to apartment because 1) a lot of them are professional references and 2) I actually reread them. And 1/2 the time the books I want are checked out at the libraries near my house , but I keep far fewer than I used to, these days, simply because they are a pain to move and to dust!
I too have a rediculous amount of books and cannot fathom giving them away. The libraries in my town are woefully understocked or only have one copy of the book. I love being able to go up to my "library" and re-check out books that I enjoyed reading. Granted, some of my fluff books will probably get bought on e-books and stored that way, but hard copy books are just so sentimental to me.
And I rather love decorating around them - always gives me one excuse to have a library room, just like my grandparents.
I like GoodReads also. I haven't tried LibraryThing, but I've heard good things about it. I'm also a freelance writer so I have an extensive magazine collection. I keep every issue where I have a published article. Sure the electronic version is nice, but I like having the print version around for reference. It's really only a hassle when moving.
@modestalmond My neighbors do that too. I love it.
I always used to do the double row of books thing; hardbacks at the back of the shelf with a row of paperbacks in front. I bought a ton of bookcases last year and finally got back to one row of books on all my bookcases. But that probably won't last very long. I wish I had some great organizing tip for you; but really, I don't think there is one.
I really like Goodreads; especially the mobile version. I buy a lot of old books and it's great to be able to check online while I'm in a bookstore and make sure I'm not buying a book I already own.
I purchased Delicious Library some years ago already and have mainly used it for movies, although some school books have found their way there as well. Sometime in the future I'll add the English books of mine, but I have so many in an array of other languages as well that it feels kind of pointless.
I've organized my books according to the somewhat same system for over a decade now, which makes me feel that I don't have to depend on a cataloguing system to keep track of my treasures. Only last Fall did I crave for a change and did something absolutely crazy - at least out of my perfectionist's point of view - namely arranged all novels and short stories according to colour...
First I freaked out completely, but then I realized it's a closed area of my life that I had thrown upside down, so I'd manage to tackle any crisis would there arise such :D I also rediscovered many friends and even more new aquaintances that I still haven't read, only bought at sales here and there. As a bonus it made the small space look a lot calmer, because the "belts" of colour are even as opposed to no regularity of alphabetical books.
Girls' and teenagers' books are in the basement and up in the apartment I'm on the second row of many shelves, but I don't care. I've purged the ones I don't care for at all and the rest will stay. Almost nothing in a home compares to a diverse book collection and I most definitely will have a real library one day!
I've been kind of a possession-editing obsessed neat freak for most of my life. Books, however, have been my dear burden. I have trouble giving them up. I have recently moved into a smaller apartment and the books just seem to kind of...take over the whole spare room/office/future 2nd kid's room. I packed away some books with intentions of giving them away and then taking them to a used bookstore when my mom told me about a school-librarian friend's conversation with a young boy. He asked to check out more than one book. She said he could take one (per school policy), read it, bring it back, and get another one. He responded with wanting more books for his friends because if they had more books where he lived, they might not be so sad. The boy, along with his mother, stays in the Women's Resource Center in my hometown. While I don't have many children's books to donate, my books would be just fine for the women that are in the shelter. That has made it MUCH easier for me to part with more of my beloved books. Women's Resource Centers usually take donations of any kind, and they're in most cities. Just a suggestion. ;)
I have a guilty confession to make: every time I manage to find more room to store all my books, I celebrate... by going out and buying more books! I can't help it!
I've been raised around books my whole life (my mother threatened to cut off my pocket money as a kid if I couldn't learn to read slower... a new book a month is an expensive hobby for a kid). My only problem is organization. I recently tried using the Dewey Decimal system on my own books (yes, I know I'm a dork, thank you), but because I collect mostly fiction, this is not the best (plus it's a pain trying to categorize them). I mainly go alphabetical by last name, which is useful, though not necessarily aesthetically pleasing. My sister color codes hers, which leads to beautiful shelves and a horrible time finding anything. In my dream home, I would solve the problem by devoting an entire room to my books.
I use Delicious Library. They recently upgraded their scanning software, so it works even better, now. My fiance and I spent an entire weekend scanning all of our books, and now we're adding all of our movies (which we're then ripping and getting rid of the physical copies to make space for more books!).
We're still purging our library, but not because we want to get rid of books; when I moved in, it became very clear that our libraries have a lot of overlap, and even we don't need two (or occasionally even three or four) copies of the same book.
We just alphabetized all of our books by author; it wasn't worth it to us to organize by genre too. At some point, I'd like to get nice large bookcases with pretty labels, and organize by genre, author and title, but for now, just by author is fine.
It's funny that not one person mentioned getting a Kindle, nook or other e-reader.
I too LOVE my books (and have an entire wall dedicated to them -- granted it's a small nyc apartment, but it's still an entire wall). However, I'm still young and there are still A LOT of books out there to read! So, what I do is buy books on the Kindle (I'm still open to books as gifts!)...and if it's one I Loved Loved Loved (and know I would read again or would want to loan out) I buy the physical copy to add to my collection - which is double stacked in my deep shelves. Yes, I know that this is wierd, but honestly, not that many make the Loved Loved Loved cut. Some I just love. And sometimes I regret the fact that I usually can't stop reading something even if it's just so so.
Periodically, I HAVE had to clean the collection out, so I pull the ones that don't break my heart and either donate them to the local library or my friends and I have a swap party where we bring stuff we don't need or want anymore (books, DVDs, clothes, jewelery) or things we thought we wanted and changed our minds (that lotion that just didn't smell right on us, but might work great for someone else)....and anything not traded goes to a women's shelter.
As for what is in the shelves, Fiction is alphabetical by author's last name, Bios and Non-Fiction are by subject and there are a couple of random shelves with things that either don't fit or don't have enough in their category to be their own shelf (e.g. word or quote books, Art/Museum Picture books, that sort of thing.).
Wow! I'm impressed with everyone's desire to organize their books. I'm a librarian, too, and I would never bother with shelf labels or Dewey at home. I sort by topic and size, with tall books on the lower shelves and little things like paperbacks on top. Gardening stuff together, craft stuff together, poetry together... I rarely have any trouble locating things. I read fiction from the Library or used book store, mainly, and therefore don't keep it, apart from some treasured favorites. I keep non-ficiton that I actually use, and eventually realize some things no longer fit that category, so they get donated to charity. I can't even imagine the feeling that I loved every book and should keep it -- it boggles my mind!
I have a tip that helps whenever I'm trying to clean up any over-supplied collection. I love collecting. Dishes, Vintage Pyrex, Yarn, Aqua Milk Glass, Books, Clothes, Magazines; you name it, I collect it. I also really dislike the thought of getting rid of anything. So when I'm trying to pare down one of my collections I use the following method:
Pull out some of the things from your collection (books, in this case) that are your least favorites, but that you still can't imagine parting with. Place these items in a box or bag and store them in your garage/storage/back of the closet/etc. for 1-3 months. If after the allotted time you have neither thought about, missed nor tried to find those items then you are probably safe either selling or donating them. (Unless, of course, those items are seasonal. Then put them away through the season they are meant for and see if you miss them.)
This method can be done in small steps or large; whatever you're most comfortable with. I tend to hold on to those boxes for a little on the long side, but never for more than a year. And most of the time I find that I don't really miss any of the things I've put there. It makes giving them up a lot easier and your home may begin to look tidier and feel roomier.
Paperbackswap.com is amazing! I've been using it for about 3 years, and it's such a great system. I like to buy books because I keep them more often than not, but if I don't want to keep them, I can trade them in for something I do want.
Paperbackswap is also where I centralize my wish list for books I want.
Also, my building has a recycling table in the laundry room, so I put old magazines, household stuff, etc, that I don't want and someone always makes use of them.
I'm getting ready to move and plan to haul most of my books with me. Luckily, good old mom (who doesn't care for books) is letting me have a couple of shelves in the built in at her house. I'll probably thin them out eventually but I've already given away 12 bags of books (it just about killed me) and don't want to give away any more right now. Can't comment on the Kindles and such but I do have some audio books that I like--but I still prefer the actual book. (In case anyone cares, Neil Gaiman does a great job of reading his books.)
You have loads of bookshelves, you just need to seperate the books into fiction, non fiction and magazines. The keep a seperate shelf for to be reviewed books.
If everything is in alphabetical order then it is easy to find it without a catalogue (online or not). Do the non fiction by subject or dewey subject.
Unless you have over 20,000 items I think it is pretty easy to see what you have.
Save you heaps of time if you don't have to enter all your titles on a website! MOre time for reading.
From a dedicated reader and library worker ( read as worshipper)
cookbooks go in the kitchen, gardening books in the garage near the garden tools, how-to books on thew shelf with the tools, decorating books in the linen closet, fiction in the bedroom (I only have time to read before sleeping these days), history, crafts and schoolbooks (we homeschool) in the dining room/classroom, and kids books in the kids' room. Also, art reference in my studio/office.
The other thing we do to keep bulk down is only use paperbacks for fiction, if there is something we HAVE to get in hardback (like sequels) we replace it with the paperback edition when it comes out. If a paperback is read so much that it begins to fall apart, we replace it with a hardback copy, though, we are not purists.
Magazines have a flat basket and are purged on the occasional lazy Sunday by tearing out interesting articles and putting them in notebooks.
this way, there are still books all over the place but so much easier to find and use. It is staggering how many books we still have after donating at least 1/3 of them while packing to move.
Donating sets of books on a particular topic to the library helped winnow things down. Deciding that I would only keep those books that get lent out/given away or those that get re-read or referenced often, has helped get things down to a level I can manage. Moving into a space with no storage means the books live on the staircase (thankfully 4 feet wide) - no organization except to stack and wedge where possible. On the upside, this arrangement means that each stair is a place to pause and check out books I've forgotten about - like a library with many many benches. It's nice.
I agree, it's a great touch is to organize by color. Looks great in a large space like that!
I have two sections of my library: in my study, there does reside my collection of reference works, deep theological thinkers, and work-related books on church history and theology. I have these grouped by theme (i.e., Hebrew shelf, History shelf, women's and liberation theology shelf). Downstairs is my "fun library", currently living in an Expedit with both sides packed. I also group by theme: one "square" for cookbooks, one "square" for my fabulous childhood fairytales series, one "square" for the classics, and the rest of the squares for all other books of various types.
Other books drift around the house, like the reading before bed and the library bag of books.
My dream house includes a library, Floor to ceiling.
My dream house would have a library, too.
Unfortunately, we're no there yet.
I recently decided to get rid of all of my books from grad school (and there are a TON of them) that I kept just-in-case. I have not referenced any of them since I took my comprehensive exams. They were overwhelming our living room so I said goodbye. I feel good about it.
I use Collectorz http://www.collectorz.com/book/ - I too love DL but I'm a PC not a Mac person and the Collectorz is very similar but for PC.
I just got my first really large bookshelf (finally convinced the hubby that the books were just dying to get out of the tubs in the basement!) and I am so glad to come across this article. I'm at the beginning phases of organizing. I had a smaller shelf (cheap 2 shelf Sauder) that I had trash picked as a pair (second one is for my husbands books) and I organized by subject with larger books towards the outsides and further down if that makes sense. It worked okay for a shelf that size, but now that I have a full size Billy, I'm really stumped! Will keep an eye on this posting to see what other organizational ideas people have!
I am a Delicious Library lover, mainly for media (Blu-ray, DVD, vinyl), but also for books and comics/graphic novels. I just updated my comic book library in the system, and it's perfect for keeping me on track for which issues I am missing from a series. It's also great to be able to mark an item as an autographed copy and mark its original/current value in the details column. Next to update will be books, then vinyl. :)
oh dear, thanks to this article I just discovered goodread - next thing I know, it's 3.30 am!
I'm a little late with this comment so I don't know how many will see it, but...
If you're serious about wanting to purge, but feel you'd be murdering your own children by getting rid of them, do what I have to do:
Move overseas.
Or pretend that you have to, if you're good at convincing yourself into a certain mind set.
I LOVE my books. They're my babies. I had a HUGE collection. I had just seriously culled my books down to 300-ish to make a little space on my shelves and was still patting myself on the back when I found out my husband got a job 14 hours by plane away. I had four months to get ready.
Our departure date is now about a month and a half away, and I've managed to get my books down to about 60 or so. I'm still working on it. But it shocked me that after I had already culled my books to what I thought was the minimum, when I found out we'd be moving, how easily I thought of a few more that could be given away.
The rest wasn't as easy (pretty hard in fact), but every time as I passed my book shelves I'd scan them over looking for just one more book to remove. Then the next time, one or two more, and the next, another. And so on.
It's been really difficult, but I'm really pleased. I'll be storing here in America ONE box of books, taking just a handful (5–10) with me, and they'll all be books I really really love.
There's something very freeing about owning just the best of the very best, and not a bit more.
I personally use http://www.libib.com for cataloging my books. I find it a lot easier to navigate, and the aesthetic is much better. I suppose it doesn't have as many tangential options as say, Delicious Library, but for keeping a record of the books I own, it works perfectly!