Organizing Books

I've got lots and lots of books. Probably 5000+. Seriously. Every room in the house has at least one bookshelf, usually many more. I have bookshelves in my garage, lining both walls. Even after my recent purge of books related to my office and older technology, which accounted for about 8-10 boxes worth going to recycling.

So here's my plan. I finished working out the details last night.
  1. Storage bins that are stackable and weight-bearing.
  2. Labels and Sharpies.
  3. No rush, do a box a day or so, fill it with books. Enter just the title of the book in a program that will look up the rest of the details from amazon and fill it in, including an image of the book cover. Assign it a category or two and the storage bin number.
Now, what I'll eventually have is a stack of storage bins with clearly visible labels. A program I can look up any book I have and know exactly where it is. Just the 100 or so books I'm actively reading, and the 100 or so reference books, will be out on my study shelves.

I'll be ready to move in the future, have organized the garage, got rid of a lot of shelving that was taking up space, while making my books even more easily found than ever before.

So that's the plan. If you see any flaws, let me know. I think the only adjustment will be keeping the containers accessible and not stacking them too high as the book I'll be looking for will probably always be in the bottom bin.

Comments

  1. Marbella6:05 PM

    Sounds super efficient to me!!!!!!!!!

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  2. SleepyElf6:58 PM

    I don't think you'll wind up liking it with the boxes just stacked on top of each other. We have our computer stuff in similar storage and it's a royal pain. You'll wind up not reading stuff because ugh so much work just to get it out. If you put them in bins and each bin gets it's own shelf you'd be alot better off. I've recently found it's not the number of books but the fact that the book shelves don't fit the books. Organize your books by size and add shelves to your bookshelves for just that size of book so you don't have all that wasted air space in between the shelves.

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  3. emc2:04 PM

    Interesting points SleepyElf. May have to try in garage first as a trial. The bookshelves definitely don't fit the books there, it's all cinder blocks and boards. And mouse poop.

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  4. SleepyElf12:37 PM

    ewww if you have mice sneaking in make sure if you do go boxes that they are plastic, we had some books in our storage room and a mouse made himself a nice little house out of it and went tinkle on what he didn't chew up for a bed. Might help you purge some more books though hehe

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  5. SleepyElf2:35 PM

    Oh.. shoulda mentioned if you're looking for reasonably priced shelves for a garage area that you can easily adjust check out Ikea's Ivar stuff. Just make sure you get the metal cross braces so it doesn't go all lopsided and fall down. For enough of it to fill a garage wall would be 200-300 bucks and if you're ambitious you can stain or paint it and put it in the house.

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  6. emc6:58 PM

    Thanks SleepyElf, lots of good stuff to sort through :-)

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  7. Ger11:03 AM

    Definitely need the plastic tub containers with snap on lids...or mice will read just your favorite parts and make their nests.

    You may need your digital recorder to speed up the inventory process...but that inventory processing while worth it...will be a pain to do.

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