Getting It Together

I love books! I’d rather buy books than shoes. Yet, I have a horrible confession to make. My bookcase is a disorganized mess. There are my research books for my writing then there are my pleasure books. Each book is haphazardly shoved on a shelf with no order or reason.  I cringe every time I glance at my four bookcases, which are crammed two rows deep on each shelf. 

That mess needs to be tackled. 

And I’ve been trying to decide how to organize the books. Do I arrange it by color? Subject? Or just size (smallest to largest)? 

So many options are available to me and each one a is viable choice.

My first option is color. This one works for two reasons. Reason A is because I may not always remember the title of a book but my mind does retain the color of it. A couple of months ago, I had to find a piece of information and knew I could find it in the pages of a green book. And when I scanned the shelves, I found the book, which was entitled The Georgian Gentleman. 

Reason B is that a color-arranged bookcase will look pretty and pretty is always nice. 

The second organizational option is by subject.  My fiction books could be gathered together and wouldn’t be mixed up with my research and other such books. Yet, when it comes to my nonfiction books (research books mainly) that causes the greatest problem. So would a head subject be Scotland then its history, geography, and costume. And what about subjects that overlap? Like Scotland in the Regency Era. I can feel my head throbbing already. 

The final option is to arrange the books by size. Just go from smallest to largest. I could put the smallest at the top and the largest, which are usually the heaviest, on the bottom. Maybe.

Are your shelves organized or do you just shove books where they fit?