First Steps in De-Piling, Continuing the Discussion

As I already showed you, my very first step in organizing my world was to bring in my old bookshelf, tuck it into the clean corner, and choose books with which to fill it.  
I chose literature classics, Bibles and faith-related books, reference books, and other non-fiction selections, covering art, design, and architecture, nutrition, home construction and repair, and organized them into groupings on the shelves.  Books we might like to find easily and quickly, we now can.


I need to show you how most of our books have been organized/stored for the last 3 years...                                                                                           

You can see that the books lined the southern window wall of 2 rooms
and wrapped around the corner, behind the table, in the dining room.
--And they rarely looked quite this neat and tidy, of course.

This was meant to be a very short-term solution, so that we could at least see the books, and have a chance of locating them more easily than if boxed and in the storage area outside.  We needed them for homeschooling, and access was important.   Since it was temporary, they were never organized in any particular way, so looking for one often meant looking through all, usually a couple of times or more.  Not exactly at eye level, they weren't easy to search through.


After seeing how many books fit in my small shelf, and how nice it was to have them organized in sections, I decided to tackle the whole lineup of books.  This is what they look like now.

It probably looks worse than ever, but what you can't tell is that at least the books are separated into meaningful piles: Children's picture books, young adult reading, homeschool curriculum, homeschool supplements/non-fiction, homeschooling and parenting resources, literature/fiction, and project-focused non-fiction.  (Woe be unto him or her who mixes them up!)


I should tell you, too, that while doing this little task, I found a book I'd just re-bought for Prince CuddleBunny, because after many times through the lined up books, then searching through the books under our stairs, and even some stored outside, I hadn't been able to locate it.  --Aargh.

Where it's going...

Hubby said he was glad I was trying to do something else with the books, as he never liked them lining the edges of the rooms.  You can imagine the eye-rolling/teeth-gritting I did at that point, at least in my head, and I handed him the drawing of what I needed from him in order to finish.  

...What it's supposed to look like.

He likely wanted to do some groaning of his own, trying to figure out what 25th hour in any day he had to do this... But I reminded him that when you're a furniture-snob cabinet-building superstar, who doesn't like substandard shelving built from kits in the house, it's either deal with the books on the floor (and an edgy wife) or get busy.  :-)
Poor guy.