3 Keys Thursday: Keeping My Book Collection in Order

Photo: Dodgerton Skillhause via Morguefile

After I write one of these posts, I often feel motivated to attack a hot spot. Today, I plan to dig into the bookshelf in my living room to find beach reads and to sort through the books that have collected there. Some will make the cut. Others will be donated to my local library.

Books are my weakness -- a fact that I'm sure is unsurprising since I am, after all, a writer and an educator. Maybe your weakness is something else -- or many other somethings, if your personal style is I love stuff. Our collections can enrich our lives, but they can also overwhelm our space if we let them. Today's three keys focus on three things I use to keep my book collection on the right side of the line between enriching and overwhelming.

Control the influx. Fortunately (and unfortunately), I collect something that's readily available so, for me, the first step is determining whether or not the book in question is one I need to purchase. Social media and online issues have done a pretty thorough job of obliterating my need for magazine subscriptions -- I can find links to much of what I want to read online, without committing to a year's worth of issues that I need to find a place for in my home. And, for the magazines I want to be able to page through, I can treat myself to the occasional issue. When it comes to books, the first question is, do I need to buy it, or can I simply check it out of the library? How much time I have to read and whether or not I plan to reference the book when I'm finished reading it are the two key factors in making this decision.

Go electronic. When it comes to books and magazines, paperbacks and hardcovers take up more room than e-books and audio books, so before I make a purchase, I need to decide on the format I prefer. In most cases, I opt for the physical book, but I've also been playing with audiobooks (so I can "read" while I drive) and re-discovering my Kindle. Price is a factor, but so are things like where and how I plan to read the book. If it's a beach book, I usually go with the e-book. This is also true if I anticipate reading it in small snippets of time, as I often do with non-fiction; that way I can tuck the Kindle in my purse and read it in waiting rooms and at times when I find myself with a small window of unexpected free time.

Sort regularly. Tastes change. The book I picked up from the clearance table way back when and never got around to reading might not look so interesting now. As with any other sorting task, you can go with a scheduled time or a time that arises naturally. Every December, we need to move the bookcase in our mudroom to make room for the Christmas tree, which means the books on the shelves get sorted at least once -- when we move the furniture out of the way or when we move it back -- which helps to keep my collection from overrunning the space allotted for it. I also raid my bookshelves for reading material when we're beach-bound or gearing up for a long trip, and usually find a few books that don't make the cut that way as well.

Despite my best efforts, I typically end up with more books than my shelves will hold. While that's not a terrible problem to have, I still need to make sure to do all of the above so my collection doesn't expand beyond the spaces I've allotted for it.

How about you? What do you collect? How do you make sure your collections are a thing of beauty and not one more thing to keep after?

Organization Extra: Re-Gifting -- In a Good Way

Photo from Magic 106.1 FM, Guelph, Canada
via Facebook

When my daughter was small, we started a book tradition at our house. I can't remember where I found the idea -- it might have been Family Fun magazine -- but I do seem to remember that it was just a front-of-book snippet by a parent. "Just" a snippet turned into a tradition that, at our house, lasted until my daughter was into her teens. And when a writer friend posted the photo at left on her Facebook page earlier this month, it had "Organization Extra" written all over it.

The process is a bit time consuming up front, but very simple. In November, gather all of your child's Christmas-themed books. Then, sometime before December 1, wrap each book individually. Beginning December 1, your child can open a book a day (or a book a week, or somewhere in between, depending upon the number of books you have available). Secretly purchasing new books I could add to the pile was fun, too, and less expensive than it would seem, as many old favorites endured for years.

My daughter loved coming downstairs each morning and opening a "new" book, and, as a bonus, it started each day with reading. Although mornings worked well for us, you could just as easily do this after dinner (or before dinner to procure some late afternoon peace and quiet), or at bedtime.

Once all of the books have been opened and the season has passed, gather them up again when you gather up the decorations and put them in a special box (labeled or unique so you can find them quickly in November). If you're feeling really industrious, you can wrap a few (or all of them) before you put them away, saving yourself some time at the outset, but choose carefully. You may find that your child deems some of this year's books too babyish next year.

Why is this an "Organization Extra"? Because managing our stuff doesn't always mean getting rid of things. Sometimes, it means rotating things from season to season so we can keep and enjoy more of what we love, without creating organizational mishaps along the way.

Merry Christmas, especially to my I love stuff friends. I've just given you an excuse to acquire more books. Then again, we authors do that.

Thank you to Carole Brown, who posted this photo on her Facebook page, 

bringing back many lovely memories.

Organizing Extra: Organizing Books

Karen Arnold via freepik.com

I've loved reading since Dick and Jane ran with Spot. I don't remember my book collection overtaking my space when I was a kid, but then again, when I was in middle school, we moved to a house with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, giving me plenty of space for my Nancy Drew collection -- and then some.

In my lifetime, I've worked in three different bookstores, and I trace the origins of my "too many books, too little space" conundrum back to those jobs, which fed my inner book collector -- sometimes at the expense of my bank account.

Our house is a Cape Cod, so when I wanted to find resources about organizing books, I was excited to find posts on the Apartment Therapy site, where they specialize in fun ideas for small spaces. And, in a decision that matches my bookstore behavior, I couldn't decide, so I'm posting both.

The first is an article (with great pictures) that explores various ways to organize books, depending on your style (I had to grab that one!); the second, geared to a weekend project approach has videos. Both provide ideas and maybe even a little motivation for taking control of book overrun.

pixabay.com

While I'll be contributing to book overrun this weekend as I put the finishing touches on my novel, I'm looking forward to putting some of those ideas to work this winter, when I have more time to tackle my list of organizing to-dos.

Happy organizing! And, if you manage to make it through the process without getting sucked into a book you forgot you had, you're stronger than I am.