4 Steps to Transform Your Bookshelves from Blah to Beautiful

Strange but true: my most challenging organizing task to date was staging a bookshelf for a client who was preparing to move. Why was it so hard? This client had great taste in books and literature, but the bookshelf itself was overflowing and overpowering the area. Rather than helping set up a useful home library, my task was to stage the room for potential buyers. In this day of digital books, music, and movies, we have less and less of a need to keep physical items on hand in our home libraries. Styling a built-in or existing bookshelf to be functional and practical can be a great way to transform your space. Books take up a lot of real estate and you want them to pull their weight in the style department as well as being on hand for actual reading and enjoyment. Here are four steps you can take to curate and maximize your bookshelves.

Step #1: Be Determined to Declutter

Overcrowded and cluttered bookshelves often lack negative space. This means there’s no place for the eye to rest, and it’s hard to find what you’re looking for. When books are double stacked or other items start to be stacked in front of the books, your space loses both its functionality and its beauty. Start your process by removing everything from your bookshelf and only replacing items you use and love.

Step #2: Be Open to Organizing

Think for a moment about where your bookshelves are located in your home and how you actually use each space. Is it a shared space that needs to accommodate games, photos, or other memorabilia on display as well as actual books? Are there younger members of the family whose books should be on more accessible shelves, or moved to their bedrooms? Do you also have bookshelves in an office or dedicated study? Do you need some space to store back up office supplies, and if so, would closed storage bins allow the space to still visually clear? Bookshelves can store more than just books, and books can—and should—be stored at their point of easiest access throughout the house if necessary.

Step #3: Be Convicted to Create

Get creative about the best use of shelving in your current home and family circumstances. I have a few clients who have chosen glass front doors to their bookshelves to reduce dust and prevent family members from mindlessly setting items on open shelves. If you want to organize your books by height or color, that’s great. At my house, we prefer categorizing by fiction/nonfiction and alphabetical by author because we want to be able to easily locate what we’re looking for. Do what makes you happy, and what your family will maintain. I think it’s wonderful when you walk into someone’s home and their bookshelves express their unique interests. Display items from your travel, or intersperse family memorabilia with books that have been meaningful in your life and that you look forward to rereading in the years to come.

Step #4: Be Eager to Edit

As you are styling your shelves, step back from time to time and look at the big picture. Instead of looking at individual items, consider whether it’s coming together as a whole. Are there items you’d like more prominently displayed? Do you need a basket or bin to store useful items that would otherwise look cluttered? I highly encourage you to shop your home and use items you already have to style your own bookshelves. Keep books that are classics and will be great to read again. Pass along books that were maybe something you collected from a book club or weren’t to your taste. Let someone else enjoy them and make space for things you enjoy and things that express your personal taste.

Looking back on my hardest organizing challenge—staging a bookshelf, of all things!—I had to shift my mindset and redefine the task. What finally helped turn the corner? I had to ignore the actual contents of the book and treat each book as a color and shape that we were putting together into a beautiful display. It was a different goal to my book collection at home, so it required a different approach. My client and I were joking that the bookshelf was more challenging for both of us book lovers than the days we spent cleaning out his garage in 100 degree weather! In the end, the listing photos turned out so well that the he used them to sell the bookshelf and several other large pieces of furniture online before his move. Getting clear about the goal made all the difference!

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Cheers,

Karina