Bloggiesta Mini-Challenge: Organizing My Books

Thanks to Cover2Cover, I'm participating in a Bloggiesta mini-challenge to organize my books and conquer my TBR pile. Planning and organizing are skills I am good at, but prioritizing I am NOT. So finding time to organize my fiction collection has been very low on my list. I have culled my print book collection so many times, and I think it is time to do it again as I alphabetize my fiction for the first time in two years. (My library shelf, my professional shelf and my craft shelves, at least, are in good shape.)

I have three big sets of built-in bookshelves. The one upstairs in my middle room is all fiction. The one downstairs is the largest and is a conglomeration of a whole bunch of things, mostly books. I think I'll move my graphic novel collection upstairs and my fiction downstairs, and plan to alphabetize it as I cull.

This is my TBR shelf and professional shelf. Books on the upper left I'm using as reference titles for stories I'm writing. Upper right are library chapter books and audiobooks. Second and third shelves are professional books, library picture books (and chocolate). Fourth and fifth shelves are craft materials.

Below, with the two doors, you see the rest of my craft materials. I spent a couple days over the summer organizing them by topic. You can't see my beautiful Mowati tileworks on my front windowsill. Cookbooks are on the bottom right near the door. I haven't figured out what to do with the long shelf at the top of the room - maybe some ornaments can go up there eventually. In any case, that's outside the scope of Bloggiesta...

Now we get to the shelves that need help. My middle room is painted dark red. My son insisted on photobombing the second half of the shelves. I must say that when I moved into this tiny 460-square-foot home from my 1500 square foot home, I reduced my fiction significantly. Since then I've culled at least twice more. Here's what's left. The bottom couple shelves are kids' books, but the rest is a hodgepodge of fiction. It drives me crazy, so I'm grateful for this encouragement to reorganize.

I'll take all my fiction downstairs and bring the graphic novels upstairs -- they might fill this space, actually -- and if they don't, I'll fill the rest with children's books.

While I'm at it, I'll figure out which of my fiction I haven't yet read (lots of it) and put those on my TBR shelf.

I have a little shelf at the bottom of my stairs which has some canning stuff and some books. I can add books from my unpacked boxes of classroom books to the bottom couple shelves.

This is my giant wall of books, 8 feet floor to ceiling along my inside corridor downstairs. It's completely a mess. I just put everything up there when I moved in and never bothered to organize it. There would have to be some major sorting. It'll be too much for one weekend, but I can definitely switch the fiction downstairs.

Whew! Now, if I didn't have a full day of teaching tomorrow, a ceremony to attend on Friday night in another city, and house guests coming over on Saturday night, I might actually be able to accomplish other things in addition to this. =)