Almost every home has a bookshelf. Although I have started to buy more and more e-books, there is still demand for a bookshelf. Unfortunately quite often is your bookshelf unorganized and  in most cases it contains things that don’t belong in there. Therefore these tips can help you to organize your bookshelf to serve its purpose better.

Decide what stays and goes

Go through all your books and decide, what stays there, what you are going to keep (but not on the bookshelf), what goes for recycling or what you are going to sell. Have three different boxes for keepers (taken away from the shelf), recycling or selling.

Label the boxes by its purpose. The first box could have a label which simply says “Books for keeping”. Put those books there that you want to keep (but which are taken out of the bookshelf).  The second box could be labeled as “Books for recycling” and you could actually have two ways of proceeding with it:  First, you could offer your books to a local library. This is something that is possible in my home town (and I believe that it’s possible elsewhere too). If you still have books left in that box (“Books for Recycling”), take them to local recycling box in your area. However you may need to find out what’s the local policy on books recycling (as this may vary). The third box contains the books you want to sell. You can take your books to a local flea market and see if anyone is interested of buying them. You can also try to sell them online too.

I have tried to recycle my books as much as possible (thus it’s the only option of those I have used personally). Although the other options might be practical ones too, for me the recycling is the easiest one since I can do it quickly.

Turn them electronic

I tend to download e-books more and more every month. I find the delivery and storage method to be very convenient. I’m not saying that one should replace all the books from physical to electronic form. However in some situations e-books work better than traditional ones. For example, some titles may only be found as electronic ones and the speed of delivery is of course something that beats the traditional books hands down.

One of the biggest disadvantages of having a electronic book is it’s usability. Normally it’s a pain to read many pages through your computer screen, thus you are tied to a computer when reading an e-book. This may change in the future, when devices like Kindle (by Amazon) become more common. I haven’t tried one yet, but I have  to admit that the idea is very compelling.

Turn them to audio

Amazon and other online marketplaces offer also audio versions of their books. By this way you can download the book in audio format and listen to it in your MP3 player. This once again saves space on your bookshelf.

Remove all the unessential ones

Keep only those books visible on your bookshelf that you find to be essential to you. That way your bookshelf doesn’t look overstuffed. Besides, you find those books you need much faster than in an overstuffed bookshelf.

Have an easy location for your bookshelf

Try to locate your bookshelf some place convenient, preferable somewhere where its location fits its purpose. For example my bookshelf is located in my work room and it contains all the titles that I may need in my work. My bookshelf is easily accessible and I can quickly access the book I want.

Magazines are allowed

Although the bookshelf is meant mainly for books, I may have magazines or reports there that I might occasionally need.  The way I keep them organized is by buying them a separate magazine storage folders, which could be located for example at the bottom level of your bookshelf. You could also label your storage boxes to see quickly what’s in it (if it’s non-transparent).

Categorize them by usage

To make your bookshelf even easier to use, try to categorize you books. You could have different levels for different purposes (you could even label the levels by the category). If you happen to store books of different category on a same level, you could purchase book dividers to keep them apart. Also, it helps to have your books to be stored so that the one you most frequently use are the easiest to access.

Conclusion

You can organize your bookshelf by various ways. And no matter if electronic books become more and more common the traditional books are not going away. And because of that, there is still need for bookshelves for many years to come

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