Styling Bookcases
Styling Bookcases
Try these simple tips below to help you with styling your bookcases:
- The first step in the process is to sort the books into categories. This is going to be different for everyone. It will depend on what you read.
- The second step is to re-shelve the books in their categories so that when the client is looking for a book, they can find it by starting at that category location.
- Step three is to add all the little knickknacks, treasures, photos, and memorabilia to the empty spaces. We try to partner the stuff with the type of books on the shelf. This makes the book storage much more homey and personal and less like a library. You can tell a lot about people when examining their books.
Remember to leave white space. To make it feel open and inviting, keep about a quarter of the space free of books (this is where you add the personal stuff).
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Janet Schiesl
Janet has been organizing since 2005. She is a Certified Professional Organizer and the owner of Basic Organization.
She loves using her background as a space planner to challenge her clients to look at their space differently. She leads the team in large projects and works one-on-one with clients to help the process move quickly and comfortably. Call her crazy, but she loves to work with paper, to purge what is not needed and to create filing systems that work for each individual client.
Janet is a Past Board Member of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and a Past President of the Washington DC Chapter of NAPO were she has been named Organizer of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
Janet Schiesl
Janet has been organizing since 2005. She is a Certified Professional Organizer and the owner of Basic Organization.
She loves using her background as a space planner to challenge her clients to look at their space differently. She leads the team in large projects and works one-on-one with clients to help the process move quickly and comfortably. Call her crazy, but she loves to work with paper, to purge what is not needed and to create filing systems that work for each individual client.
Janet is a Past Board Member of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals and a Past President of the Washington DC Chapter of NAPO were she has been named Organizer of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
We have so many books. I’d like to have less, but they aren’t all mine. My husband has a vast collection. Occasionally, I will go through mine to see what can be released. With spring approaching, I think it’s time to take another look.
Thank you for the inspiration.
Good plan Linda!
Great tips,
I love organizing books! There are a lot of different way people like to organize them but I like this way the best. It makes the most sense to me and most clients!
It is very satisfying to organize a bookcase. I think books are beautiful!
I can spend hours organizing a bookshelf. I don’t know why I put things where i do, I just know when it feels balanced and “right.” Great point about the categories differing from one person to another. It’s good to know your purpose before you begin: do you want it primarily to look nice, or is this an active reference location where you want to be able to keep and reliably find certain books?
Fun topic, and a fun project!
Good point about knowing the purpose before starting this project.
I was doing this for a client last week. We mixed some photos in amongst the books as well as some trophies and knick-knacks. It’s fun – time consuming but fun!
Yes. I like this kind of project. More of a focus on aesthetics than on efficiency.
Great tips, Janet. I do find that white space is especially helpful. I like to group books by fiction (made-up stories) and nonfiction (real-life accounts). If people enjoy different genres, sorting books by those types also works nicely.
I love some white space!
I’ve never left space for personal items on my bookcases on purpose. Usually they just get placed wherever there’s room, whether it’s in front of the books or between categories. I may keep this in mind next time I reorganize (which is due to happen soon).
Good idea Janet. Doing this project every once-in-awhile will keep your bookcases fresh.
One of my favorite client projects is organizing the books on a bookshelf unit in order to create a personal library (or homeschool library); I think it comes from my first job, when I worked as a page in the public library until I went to college. Dividing by categories is absolutely key, as you say, and I’m a big believer in function over aesthetics, but I was absolutely charmed by your approach to matching the memorabilia and trinkets to the themes of the textual categories! How neat! I have a client for whom we’ve put religious items near his faith-related books, but there are some fun sailing/island trinkets that would be perfect for the empty spaces surrounding books on sailing, learning languages, and travel!
I love styling bookcases too!
I’m a fan of small plants on my bookcases.