My oldest son, Chris, loves books. He has quite a collection on shelves that line one wall in his and Lorna’s bedroom. They recently rearranged and the books looked overwhelming in the room.
There were cute parts, but even they were hard to see unless you were right in front of them…
Chris and Lorna have both been seriously tidying their house and they decided that embrace the KonMarie technique and de-clutter the shelves, without letting go of many books. They took everything off the shelves and rearranged by color.
What was a jumble is now really nice to look at! The clutter is gone, and amazingly enough the books are more engaging. I want to stop and browse where before I just walked on by. It almost makes me wish I had a whole bunch of books to do this with!
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I love this idea, plus I love books! Looks great. I was curious of the pictures above the books. What are those all about?
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Those are icons that have been decoupaged to wood. I believe that many are of saints, but I haven’t looked at them closely enough to know for sure.
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It’s a vast improvement visually, but how do they find particular books without a lot o effort?
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I know them all pretty well, and so far it hasn’t taken more than a few minutes to find something. And usually when I finish one book, I don’t have a clear idea what I want to read next, so I’m often browsing without a particular book in mind.
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it does look much better – and that’s an awful lot of books!!! Have they read all of them?
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I asked Chris and he guessed at 20-25% but has an idea of how to get a better guesstimate. He may let us know later.
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I picked a few shelves at random, and counted how many I’d read on each; it was about a third for three of the shelves, and two-thirds for the fourth—so I think I can probably say I’ve read 35-40% of these books (but there are more in other rooms, and the percentage is probably lower…)
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Wow! That looks great. Sort of like organizing a stash! Lessons learned from mom…
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I am simply astounded at the difference! It is actually PRETTY now! The wall is now a work of art…
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Yeah, I was stunned. It just goes to show how color and organization can work together.
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Looks just like the wall in my son and dil’s bedroom, including the Star Wars, but minus the icons.
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I’ve never thought of arranging books according to color. I usually arrage them according to author, classical books, etc. But that seems a good idea. Maybe next time it comes to dusting the complete shelves, I’ll arrange them like that. It does look good.
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Love the look of the books by color, but is it hard to find one by title or author?
PS: so glad you turned me on to the KonMari method!
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Chris says he can find what’s he’s looking for—he’s touched the books often enough to know what most look like. He may chime in on the comments later today.
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As posted in response to another comment, I know them well enough to find what I’m looking for pretty quickly; the only time (so far) that I couldn’t find one, it was because it was on a shelf in a different room (but I *was* looking in the place where it would have been, according to spine color).
Also, I have an online catalog (at https://www.librarything.com/profile/hgoldsmith), which is very useful.
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I purchased that book last year when I saw it a Costco right after reading about it in your blog. I like her method of folding clothes, but I’m not interested in getting rid of stuff… I do like the looks of the books when organized by color, but can’t imagine trying to find a specific book when using such a system. Maybe publishers should start choosing the colors of book covers by the author’s last name! Then even libraries could be color coordinated!
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This is brilliant! Looks like art now!
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An amazing transformation and so much more calming. But truth be told, getting it so no books are above the bookcase at ceiling height is a big factor.
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Yes, that does help too. That’s another one of those things that Marie Kondo says: nothing on top of a bookcase.
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Nothing on top of a bookcase? I have all my fabric scraps (by color) in different size and shape clear glass containers on top of my 5′ tall bookcase.. It looks like a candy store, but without the calories!
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Looks pretty, but I cant imagine having my cookbooks, and my quilt books and my novels mixed together, arranged by color. I’d never find anything! At least this is a LOT better than that stupid decorating trend of having the “pages out” instead of the spines, or all wrapped in butcher paper!
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