How I Organize My Books

We’ve had quite the collection of book posts around here recently! My lovely guest posters from the last week decided to write about books (which I don’t hate), and I’m rounding it up with a post about how I personally organize my books. I’m a huge bookworm and have a ton of books, but I also live in Boston and have limited space, so I have to be strategic. Whether you like seeing how other people do this or you’re looking for some tips, I hope this post helps!

I received the bookplate featured in this post in exchange for an honest review. As always, my views are my own. Thank you for supporting Kate the (Almost) Great!

Desk with shelves – It’s very important for me to have a workspace because I work from home, but because I live in a Boston apartment, there isn’t as much space as a house would. So to maximize space, I have a desk that comes with shelves above and below it! On the shelf above my desk, I store the books that I need more frequently (like when I was in school) and the ones that I’m reading this year. On the shelf below my desk, I keep the larger books that take up too much space above, especially ones that I’ve read in the last 2 years in case I want easy access.

Since this is both storage and a display, you could also do fun things with your books. Some options are organizing them by the color of the covers, alphabetically by author, or by genre.

Other shelves – I’m lucky because our apartment has built-in shelves in my closet! This is where I keep all of my other books that I might want access to. This has been great because when I get a hankering for a reread or want to loan a friend a book, I don’t have make the trip to our storage unit or our house in Maine! If you have the space, I suggest getting even just a small set of shelves for your place. You could even get one that could double as a bedside table!

What I did with these books has differed over the last six months. When I was in school, I grouped my books by school vs. fun. This way, I could easily access the books I might need for school, which was super helpful when I was studying for my MA comprehensive exam. Now, I’m doing it more by access. I have 2 shelves to hold my books, and the bottom one is generally blocked by other things in my closet. Because of this, I put the books that I might want or need on my top shelf. That way, it isn’t a big production to get at my things, which is especially necessary right now because I’m on crutches.

Other storage – Like I mentioned, my family has a storage unit because living in a Boston apartment does not allow for a lot of storage options. There and our house in Maine are the two locations where I have the rest of my books. And, guys, man oh man do I have a lot of books. Before you judge me, as a reminder, I use to teach high school English and I have lots of books from my classroom library. My plan is to go through those books this summer and get rid of any that I don’t use or need. First dibs on those will go to my cousins, as I have five that are between ten and sixteen. Any that they don’t want will be donated or sold. As for the rest of them, at least once a year, I take books from Boston and move them to storage and then take books from storage and move them to Boston.

How do you keep track of your books? One thing I did with my classroom library is make a list of every single book I had and kept a list of who borrowed what, and that way if one went missing, I had an idea of where to start looking. But this is a little time consuming if you’re a book hoarder proud owner of many books. And if you’re in that position, it’s also time consuming to write your name in everything. Solution? Fawnsberg custom bookplate stamp! (Note: this is the product I was sent for review that I mentioned above.)

Why this is great? I think it’s equally a great tool for making sure no one can steal your book and claim it’s actually theirs and a cool thing for the book lovers out there. The stamp and ink are in really high quality, and they come with instructions on how to use them. As you can see from the above picture, I struggled, but I think that’s also because I haven’t used a stamp in maybe fifteen years (yes, I’ll be 27 on June 5, so mark your calendars 😉). I’m so excited to stamp allll of my books! Get yours here.

Oh, and even better? This company is run by a pair of sisters! I love that so much.

Would you label your books like this? How do you organize your books?

Like this post? Check out:

 How To Display Your Books, 2018 Recent Reads: January-March, 31 Historical Fiction Novels To Take You Back in Time, My 2018 TBR List