If you, like me, have been bored of staying at home all day because of the pandemic and have decided to clean your home, you might have reached the point where you try to figure out how to organize bookshelves. Even if you haven’t been cleaning, sometimes you might want to refresh your bookshelves, especially if you’re in the habit of carelessly cramming books in your bookshelves.
It can be daunting to decide how to organize bookshelves. Do you do it alphabetically? By size? Color?
The thing is, however you choose to organize your bookshelves, it has to be a system that works for you. It should fit the space you gave and help you find you the books you’re looking for easily.
Organizing your favorite books doesn’t need to be complicated. That’s why I’ve rounded up a list of seven smart ways to organize your books, even if you have no professional librarian experience.
Let’s dive in!
By color
If you go on Instagram or Pinterest and you search for anything book-related, there’s bound to be a couple of aesthetically-pleasing photos of books organized by color. The whole thing’s just so beautiful.
Your eyes will be drawn from the vibrant reds to the mellow yellows, and the entire spectrum of the rainbow. To be honest, when I see photos like these, it makes me want to grab a book, curl up in bed, and just read, so I think this method is really effective.
This strategy is ideal if you’re the kind of reader that likes to make a statement, associates certain stories with their covers, or remembers things visually.
The great thing about this method is that you can get super creative with it–stack your colors, go for a rainbow look or arrange in an ombré pattern. It also makes your bookshelf look much cleaner and curated.
By genre and subject
You might want to mix and match how to organize your bookshelf. You can decide to have some fun by organizing your books by genre, subject or mood.
This organization strategy is great for readers that don’t always know the exact book they want to read next (aka me), but knows the kind of book they’re looking for. Organizing by genre and subject makes it easy to find the right book to read for your current interests and mood. This way, you’ll know exactly where to look if you need to satisfy your knowledge of the Star Wars franchise or if you just want a little cozy mystery to stimulate the detective in you.
This method is also great for people who make book recommendations or lend books to others from their personal library, because similar books will be shelved together.
While organizing by genre and subject can be pretty fun, it also takes a bit of work to do.
First, you have to determine if you want to organize by genre, and what genres you’ll use. Do you want to be very specific and organize your romance novels by sub-genres within the Romance genre? If yes, then you’ll have to think about how to organize your sub-genres. If you want to do it alphabetically, then your space operas will come before your steampunk and travel memoirs (we’ll talk more on alphabetical organization below).
You can also organize by category. This way, you can put all your Young Adult fiction together, all your nonfiction books together, and all your adult books together. You can also separate fiction from nonfiction here.
By mood
Another option is to organize your books by mood. Stack all your horror novels together, as well as all your rom-com novels. Put all the books that make you cry together, and those that make you swoon in one corner.
The process of arranging your books like this could be a lot of fun because it would make you think about how a book makes you feel before you arrange it.
Alphabetically – by title
This organization method is ideal if you have a massive collection of books and you remember titles better than genres or plots.
Organizing your bookshelf alphabetically helps you ensure that books of all genres and styles can stay beside one another. This method also highlights the depth and breadth of the books you own. It allows you to use your space well, but also leaves room for growth as your collection expands.
When you organize your books by title, you need to establish some things before you start. For instance, will you honor starting articles/words like, “A”, “The”, “This”and “My”? Establish your arrangement system before you start arranging books so that you won’t get frustrated when a new variable comes in while you’re in the middle of the project.
Alphabetically – by author
Just like the method above, this method works best if you have a diverse collection of books, especially old books. When I say old books, I’m talking of books written by people like Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway and Agatha Christie. Even better if you have old authors mixed in with modern authors like Lee Child, Tomi Adeyemi and Margaret Atwood.
This method is great when you need a streamlined way or organizing your books because it ensures that you’ll know exactly where each book is located provided you know the author of the book.
When organizing by author, the normal method is to alphabetize the last name of the author. But rules are meant to be broken so you can definitely alphabetize the first name. Whatever rocks your boat!
However, if you have a gazillion books and you’re not good with names, then this method might not be the best one for you. If you really want to alphabetize your books in this case, then doing it by title may be the way to go.
Unread books
This method is simple: gather all the books you haven’t read yet and put them in a To Be Read (TBR) section so that they don’t get lost among your other books.
This is especially helpful if you have small collections or spaces where you don’t keep too many books. Rather than trying to organize by a different, stressful method, simply stack the books you’ve read and the ones you haven’t separately.
Just keep two shelves for the READ/TO READ categories. If you’re anything like me, there is a good chance that you’ll have more TBR books than finished titles. So you might want a bigger shelf for your unread book.
And the best part?
You’ll always have a book (or two or even five) to reach for when you want to read something new.
By height and size
It can be really unpleasant to look at books of different sizes mixed together on a shelf–especially when the shelf does not have the space to hold giant books alongside small books. A solution to this is to organize your books by height and size. Keeping books of similar sizes and heights together can give your bookshelf a clean, orderly feel.
Put all your oversized books on the top or bottom of your shelf lying down, rather than standing on their spines. Then put your smaller-sized books next to each other in decreasing order.
The goal is to make straight, even lines with the tops of your books, as opposed to zigzag-like, mountaintop rows. This makes the books fit more easily on your shelf and allows you to find what you’re looking for easily.
Wrapping it up
These methods are not set in stone. You can choose to combine two or more of the systems and make them work for you. For example, you can decide to arrange alphabetically by title and by genre. Or you can organize by height/size and by mood.
Just remember that whatever method you choose should work well for you. The fact that a method worked for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you.
