Monday Motivation: Organizing Your Bookshelves

How are you doing with getting your family room/living room organized this month? I've been busy with helping several clients get their homes and closets organized, but I did manage to go through my bookshelves.

I removed everything from the shelves, dusting and vacuuming as I went. As I removed each item, I evaluated whether I wanted to keep it or not.

Those items making the cut were sorted by topic (gardening, cooking, general resources, family and marriage, fiction, Christian living, and Bible resources).

Those items not making the cut were boxed up and put into my car to be dropped off at Goodwill.

I placed each category of books onto their own section of shelf, separating each section with some of my favorite items. I like to use photos, boxes, baskets, vases, and small items like my grandma's old Brownie camera and a horseshoe found in my garden. For the warmer months, I'm using some lighter colored vases. Come winter, I'll probably change them out to golds and browns - we'll see.

A little staging trick is to place all the book spines up to the edge of the shelves. I use some books laying on their sides to finish off the end of a run of books.

This arrangement makes it very easy to find any book I need in just a few seconds.

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Tidy Brown Wren, bringing order to your nest

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