Get Your Unruly Book Collection in Order Once and For All

Maliah West

February 2, 2024 at 9:02 AM·7 min read

Instead of adding to your never-ending "to be read" list, consider tackling your overflowing bookshelves first.

This story is a part of New Year, New You, a package devoted to small, low-stress home improvement projects that, with a little effort, will dramatically improve your life.

Book lovers, the time has arrived. This is the year to finally tackle your overflowing bookshelf (and the piles of books stacked alongside it) and store your books like the treasures they are. Deciding where to start when organizing your books can be difficult, especially when you’ve been collecting them for years. For some expert assistance, we chatted with Darlene Okpo, owner of Adanne, a Brooklyn-based bookstore and community space who shared her strategies for keeping books organized and damage-free both in-store and in her own collection. Keep reading for our book organization and storage tips and tricks, and for some bookshelf picks that won’t remind you of a stuffy library.

Assess your stock

Before you can explore buying a new bookshelf, you’ll need to take inventory of what you have. If your collection isn’t too extensive, you can do a mental walkthrough of your books, but if you’re working with hundreds (or thousands) of books it may be helpful to get more organized. You can easily do this via a simple Excel spreadsheet, a Notion template, or an app like Libib if you really want to get fancy.

Next, it’s time to truly assess your home collection and remove anything that doesn’t serve you—yes that includes your last book club read that you hated—and any books that you may have doubles of and create piles to donate and keep. The easiest way to get rid of your books is to donate them to local thrift stores. But, don’t be afraid to get creative and disperse your unwanted books through book swaps with other book-loving friends, dropping a few in a Little Free Library in your neighborhood, and also selling them to bookstores that purchase used books.

One last (perhaps obvious) tip, that I, a chronic book buyer, am taking into the New Year is checking out books from my public library and using apps like Libby and Hoopla, instead of buying new books that I don’t have room for.

Organization strategies

Now comes the fun part: organizing your remaining books. You’ll want to organize in a way that makes sense for you and your home library. Okpo shelves her books by genre (African American history, non-fiction, fiction, home, style, etc.) in her store. But there are many other options, such as organizing by author, title, or alphabetical order. You can also create your own organization style, which may look like putting all of your favorite books together or the books on your TBR (to be read) list on one shelf.

While other options like color coding and flipping your books page-side may look great in Instagram shots of your bookshelf, they can be unhelpful when trying to locate your books, so you’ll want to keep that in mind when choosing an organization method.

After your books are paired together, Okpo also recommends lining them up in height order, which will typically look like hardcover books first and then paperbacks. If your bookshelf allows for it, you can also store books vertically to create space to display larger books, magazines, and other decor items.

Keeping your books safe from damage

Once you’ve organized your books you’ll also want to keep them looking good. Luckily Okpo, who has experienced her fair share of book damage, shared her key tips for keeping books in pristine condition.

First, you need to keep books off of the floor and away from windows. While they look great in Instagram-styled pictures, it’s a hazard for them long-term. If your books are on the floor in piles, it’s easy for spills or flooding to easily reach your books and damage them, and the covers can easily get bent if you’re putting heavier books on top of lighter ones. The sun can also fade your book's colors and forgetting to close a window can result in your books getting soaked if it rains. As books are made of paper, they are very susceptible to water damage, specifically mold and mildew. Once they’re wet, you’ll need to get rid of them, so take preventative measures before this happens and save yourself the hassle (and pain) of having to throw your books away. If you have rare books in your collection, Okpo recommends picking up plastic book covers to keep them especially protected.

As for regular maintenance, you can keep it simple by taking a few minutes once a week to spruce up your bookshelf. "Dust your books weekly. Get a duster and dust your shelves. Your books really pick up so much dust… people think that books don't get dusty or dirty they do. So it's good to just wipe your books down with a baby wipe or disinfectant wipe," Okpo said.

You’ll also want to be mindful when packing your books, as this is when they’re most likely to be damaged. Try to only pack books with other books and put your heaviest books at the bottom with lighter paperbacks on top.

How to decide on a bookshelf

After you’ve purged your unwanted books, committed to a home library organization strategy, and learned to give them the care they deserve, it’s time to look into updating your current bookshelf set-up or buying a bookshelf for the first time (floor pile bookkeepers, we’re looking at you). You’ll want to keep in mind the size of your book collection and buy a bookshelf that can fit slightly more than your current lineup as you’ll probably be adding to it over time. Outside of buying a new bookshelf you can also go the secondhand route with many options available on online shops like Facebook Marketplace and Offer Up.

You can also skip freestanding bookshelves entirely, and opt for wall storage instead, which can free up floor space if you don’t have much. "Floating shelves for books are great because it's on a wall and you have open space on the floor. You don't have to worry about building anything. I know a lot of people don't like building shelves," said Okpo, who uses a lot of wall-mounted shelving in her bookstore. She also recommends reading bookshelf reviews closely to make sure they last long and aren’t too difficult to assemble. You can also look to social media, particularly TikTok, to get inspiration for setting up shelving and displaying your books. I’ve seen everything from customized bookshelf arches to side tables with built-in book space to a closet turned home library. If you’re in the market for a new bookshelf, check out these options which offer a twist on the classics and will be able to handle storing your growing collection.