Since I’m in the middle of a disaster zone, I thought I’d look up ways of organizing my collection. I’m alphabetical all the way, but I thought I’d research other ideas as a way to shake things up a bit. While looking, I ran across two strange ways, at least in my opinion and for my personal collection, that I wanted to talk about. Or, more importantly understand, why/how these methods work.
Option 1: Organize by size or random sizes
Some people don’t like the look of all the same sized books in a row, they like random heights instead. Now, I love how this bookshelf looks, I really, really do. But if you’re like me, have mostly paperbacks which are all the same size, this is not possible. I would have one random size for every 10 books. Which is not as aesthetically pleasing, if you ask me.
Besides that issue, my second thought on this idea is how would you find anything? I’d have a Laurell K. Hamilton (paranormal) sitting next to a Jude Deveraux (mostly historical romance) which might be next to my copy of Life in a Medieval Village (reference). And, while they might get along sitting together, har har, it would be a booger to find one of them if they were in no type of order. Same goes for finding all the books in one series if I’m trying to read one in its entirety. So while this does look amazing, it would be a big old mess if I was needing a specific novel.
Option 2: Organize by color
I do love the prettiness of color coding, however my novels look nothing like these; they are mostly black. I’m guessing this is mostly reference books and the like. Unless you purposefully bought only colorful books for this purpose alone, I can’t see this being possible.
Also, like with option 1, this seems the opposite of organized. How would you find anything? Oh sure you can find your blue books in seconds, but what about thatLife in a Medieval Village? Was it a white or a grey cover? If you don’t know that, or the author, this would be a nightmare (to me) unless you have a small collection or a color coded spreadsheet.
So far, it looks like I’ll be sticking to alphabetizing. I think I may have too many books for any other way, lol.
What do you guys think? Could these actually be functional? For those of you who may use one of these techniques, how do you make it work? Can you find things easily? Is the upkeep difficult? How do you keep your shelves organized?
I put series together and in order. Author’s works together as much as possible. Outside of that, I don’t really have any origination.