We’ve finished moving. I have some light cleaning left to do at our old house, a few odds and ends to put away here and all of my books left to unpack. The new house is approximately double the size of our old house. There’s tons of storage, huge rooms and an amazing amount of natural light. It’s wonderful.
Except we gave up a room in moving. Our old house was a 3 bedroom, 2 bath with a den. This new house is a 3 bedroom, 3 bath with a sunroom. The problem with the sunroom is that it’s totally open to the rest of the house. The entire back wall of the house (which is the sunroom) is windows. The inside wall is made up of double glass doors into the living room, a large window into the living room and a huge doorway into the dining room. This leaves me with one full wall (the wall separating the sunroom between the main living area and the master bedroom) of free space for bookshelves – and it isn’t very big.
This is the back wall of the sunroom. I had to angle the shelves in order to make them fit (it was my SIL’s suggestion). I actually like how they look, but..where am I supposed to put the rest of the shelves? I have four more that need to go somewhere.
There’s extra space in the living room where I can set up a reading nook. But it isn’t large enough to hold more than one or two small shelves. So, again..where do I put the rest? The shorter shelves I can line up against the back wall of the sunroom under the windows I guess, but that means buying more shelves since I only have 2 short ones right now. Not that I have a problem with that, but MM might.
That isn’t my only dilemma. I’m also not sure how I should organize them. I used to have a set shelves for my collections (authors I’ve glommed over the years – Linda Howard, Hannah Howell, Lisa Kleypas, etc), one for my keepers that weren’t gloms (maybe just one or two books by the same author), one for my hardcovers/trade paperbacks and a set for my TBR pile/review books. Do I keep them the same way? Since I’ll be using shorter shelves that means less books per shelf. Which means my collections will be spread out farther. Not a big deal, but I like having everything together.
Because I’m nosy and looking for inspiration, how about a quick survey? Feel free to answer the questions here in the comments or on your own site with a link here so I can read it.
1. How do you have your books organized? Do you alphabetize by author, keep your gloms together or jumble them all up in a way only you recognize?
2. Where do you keep your books? Do you have a room for them or are they scattered all over the house?
3. Do you separate your hardbacks and trade paperbacks, or shelve them with your mass market paperbacks?
4. Do you proudly display your books in the main part of the house, or keep them hidden in a closet or bedroom?
5. Like me, do you dream of having a library, like the one in Beauty and the Beast?
