The art of organizing a bookcase
It has been a long time since my last post. Summers are quite challenging in terms of time. My three children do not attend any camps throughout the summer and so it is hands on full time. It has been my goal to blog about our exciting trip and our flight to Czechia (the Czech Republic, which has been once again renamed), which ended up with an emergency landing at JFK and huge amount of gratitude for our lives and the incredible power of human kindness.
When we travel, it is usually me and my children. My husband comes to meet up towards the end but not this year. I am not sure if you ever left your husband at home for five weeks with no cleaning lady or lawn service. I just have to say, despite his absolute best efforts the outside was a jungle and the inside was 'guy clean'.
Let go first, organize later
As I am finally getting our house back into clean order, there are some areas that came to my attention, which I have not visited in years. Today I want to spend some time recapping the organization of our bookcase. It is a bookcase we purchased shortly after getting married. Both Jeffrey and I are avid readers, so you can only imagine how many books we have collected over the years. There are books of many genres... novels, biographies, art books and workbooks, Samurai books, books about building cabins and house plans, comics and a collection of my Czech books etc.. And then there is a huge collection of textbooks, both related to our very specific degrees from back when... I have a degree in Economics and political economy and my husband has a degree in comparative religion. It has been difficult to let go of some of the books over the years. Every few years we tried to let some of them go but despite our best efforts, we still kept quite a few. It has been a shock to learn that both of us were very willing and ready to shed a large portion of them. It is very helpful that we live close to a wonderful small bookshop in Manayunk, The Spiral Bookcase, which was willing to take a huge portion of our religious and spiritual books plus some others. And a shout out to the public libraries that are absolutely incredible places with book assortment like no other. They can order books from libraries around the world. And your circulation is great for the library. They take your donations too.
Sorting
We removed all of our books out and first determined what books to donate and what books to keep. The organizing guru Marie Kondo says that you first have to take your books out of hibernation, expose them to fresh air and make them conscious. Books are essentially just sheets of paper bound together with sole purpose to be read but then there is the emotional component. So when you are deciding what book to keep and what to let go, forget whether you will read it again or not. Pick the book up into your hands and decide if it moves you. It is that "spark of joy", which becomes a deciding factor. It is not if you are going to read it again or who signed it, where it was purchased or whether it was a gift.
Organizing
I find that organizing a book shelf can be very daunting task. I often ask myself how to make things functional and visually appealing at the same time. It seems everywhere you look these days, whether in a magazine or a TV shows, items in the bookcases are staged. I often think of Joanna Gaines, who makes all her bookcases look great with antique spines or books turned to show raw page edges to add dimension. It is very pretty but very impractical. My husband wants to see the spines of our books and he is pleased by vertical stacking. After 15 years of marriage he agreed to some horizontal stacking.
We organized the bookcase by genre (novels, art, comics, children literature, cooking) and language. We kept the children books and comics at a lower level so our children can reach them easily. We did the same with our family photos. They are placed on the very bottom shelf so our kids can always browse though them. It is their favorite thing to do... to look through the albums; see all the years past, our families past and present and retell all the stories they once told.
Displaying
I love to add items that bring me joy, not just shelf fillers. I have a collection of different pitchers that I use when we host guests. I have a favorite clay chicken baker and a few other times that I don't use of regular basis and they find a perfect spot along with my cook books. I also like to put framed or unframed pictures behind horizontally stacked books. And of course there is always plenty of room for a plant. I think we have about 50 plants in the house.
Most importantly, remember that our homes are shared with other people. When we think of space and function, we think of the other members of our households. These are rooms and items we share and use together.
When we travel, it is usually me and my children. My husband comes to meet up towards the end but not this year. I am not sure if you ever left your husband at home for five weeks with no cleaning lady or lawn service. I just have to say, despite his absolute best efforts the outside was a jungle and the inside was 'guy clean'.
Let go first, organize later
As I am finally getting our house back into clean order, there are some areas that came to my attention, which I have not visited in years. Today I want to spend some time recapping the organization of our bookcase. It is a bookcase we purchased shortly after getting married. Both Jeffrey and I are avid readers, so you can only imagine how many books we have collected over the years. There are books of many genres... novels, biographies, art books and workbooks, Samurai books, books about building cabins and house plans, comics and a collection of my Czech books etc.. And then there is a huge collection of textbooks, both related to our very specific degrees from back when... I have a degree in Economics and political economy and my husband has a degree in comparative religion. It has been difficult to let go of some of the books over the years. Every few years we tried to let some of them go but despite our best efforts, we still kept quite a few. It has been a shock to learn that both of us were very willing and ready to shed a large portion of them. It is very helpful that we live close to a wonderful small bookshop in Manayunk, The Spiral Bookcase, which was willing to take a huge portion of our religious and spiritual books plus some others. And a shout out to the public libraries that are absolutely incredible places with book assortment like no other. They can order books from libraries around the world. And your circulation is great for the library. They take your donations too.
Sorting
We removed all of our books out and first determined what books to donate and what books to keep. The organizing guru Marie Kondo says that you first have to take your books out of hibernation, expose them to fresh air and make them conscious. Books are essentially just sheets of paper bound together with sole purpose to be read but then there is the emotional component. So when you are deciding what book to keep and what to let go, forget whether you will read it again or not. Pick the book up into your hands and decide if it moves you. It is that "spark of joy", which becomes a deciding factor. It is not if you are going to read it again or who signed it, where it was purchased or whether it was a gift.
Organizing
I find that organizing a book shelf can be very daunting task. I often ask myself how to make things functional and visually appealing at the same time. It seems everywhere you look these days, whether in a magazine or a TV shows, items in the bookcases are staged. I often think of Joanna Gaines, who makes all her bookcases look great with antique spines or books turned to show raw page edges to add dimension. It is very pretty but very impractical. My husband wants to see the spines of our books and he is pleased by vertical stacking. After 15 years of marriage he agreed to some horizontal stacking.
We organized the bookcase by genre (novels, art, comics, children literature, cooking) and language. We kept the children books and comics at a lower level so our children can reach them easily. We did the same with our family photos. They are placed on the very bottom shelf so our kids can always browse though them. It is their favorite thing to do... to look through the albums; see all the years past, our families past and present and retell all the stories they once told.
Displaying
I love to add items that bring me joy, not just shelf fillers. I have a collection of different pitchers that I use when we host guests. I have a favorite clay chicken baker and a few other times that I don't use of regular basis and they find a perfect spot along with my cook books. I also like to put framed or unframed pictures behind horizontally stacked books. And of course there is always plenty of room for a plant. I think we have about 50 plants in the house.
 |
| Our bookcase |
Most importantly, remember that our homes are shared with other people. When we think of space and function, we think of the other members of our households. These are rooms and items we share and use together.
 |
| Jeffrey is removing his books from the shelves. |
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