If you’re an avid bookworm, owning too many books can be an overwhelming problem. You find yourself nailing new shelves onto existing ones, trying to accommodate the providence, but it’s always a losing battle. No amount of ad hoc storage is going to do the trick. What you need is a system: something that adapts flexibly as your book collection expands.
Having an out-of-control book collection isn’t a lot of fun. Rarely can you find the books that you want. And even when you can, you know the moment you put them down again, you’ll lose them. It’s a good idea, therefore, to know what to do when your book collection starts ballooning out of control. How can you keep track of your books while maintaining a large collection at home?
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Perform A Book Census
Before you begin rearranging anything in your home, it’s worth performing a book census and finding out which you need, and which you can donate or chuck.
As you go through your collection, you’ll be amazed at just how many books are no longer relevant. You’ll find all sorts of old tomes that you have no use for anymore. This process can often enable you to whittle down your book collection and prevent it from taking over your property.
Use Your Vertical Space
Home libraries tend to make use of all the vertical space in the room. This isn’t by chance. It’s to maximize the room and, therefore, the storage space. In wealthy households, you’ll often find home libraries with ladders attached to rails that allow you to select books from the top shelves.
Clearly, you don’t have to go to these lengths in your home: tall bookcases with portable step ladders should do the trick.
Get Somebody To Curate Your Books
Figuring out a system for organizing too many books can be a challenge. If you’ve never run a library before, you don’t always know how to do it.
Fortunately, you don’t have to work it out yourself from scratch. There are professionals who can come to your home and perform the task for you. You just tell them how you’d like them to arrange your items, and they’ll get on with it.
Make Your Library More Fashionable
Creating a cheap library is an option and it’ll do the job. But inexpensive fittings can often make you feel as though your book collection is out of control. It just doesn’t look attractive.
Using quality bookshelves, however, can make a world of difference. All of a sudden, having a vast book collection seems like a good thing. It feels like everything is under control and “meant to be there.” Some people like to add to the style of their library by filling shelves with non-book items, such as candles or vases. If you have space, you could try this too to increase the room’s appeal.
Are you an organised bookworm, or do you struggle with too many books in the house? What methods do you use to keep your collection under control? Share below, and don’t forget to like and pin if you enjoyed this post! You might also like the following posts:
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Great post! I have all my books in spreadsheets set up for each genre so I can find all the books I want since I’m a mood reader! And I have my shelves organised in rainbow colours!
I keep wanting to do a census of my books but I never get around to it
Those are helpful tips! Every Diwali, in the cleaning process, I go through my collection & discard books that I disliked. But the painful bit is with the books for which I’m on the fence. Do share views on how to dispassionately sort through books & discard them.