How to organise your books

Organising your books can be challenging, but it can also be fun, so I'm going to share some different ways in which you can organise your bookshelves.

As you probably know by now, I love to read, which means I have a lot of books in my house. These books vary in genre, style, author and topic.

Each time I receive or buy a new book, I have to rearrange my bookcase in my bedroom. It's a fairly big bookcase with 10 different shelves of varying sizes. However, when it comes to rearranging my books, it's often a difficult challenge.

In my family, my sister also loves to read and so does my mum. We came up with the idea to turn our spare room into a library and over the past weekend, my sister and I began organising all our books as we finally had all the bookcases to fill.

This wasn't an easy feat. We had almost all the books laid out so we could get an idea of how to group the books - some, however, did remain in the library because there wasn't enough space.

But after a couple of hours of hard work, we finally organised the books on the appropriate shelves and now, all that is left to do is to buy some comfy chairs.

I love organising things and pride myself on my organisation skills, so I thought I'd share some ways on how you can organise any of the books you have in your home.

Types of books

One way to organise your books is by the type of book and what I mean by this is paperback vs hardback. A lot of readers generally prefer to stick to one type of book, but that doesn't mean that you will never own the other type.

I like paperbacks but I do have a couple of hardbacks. The hardbacks tend to be bigger and look a bit odd amongst the paperbacks, so if you prefer having one type of book altogether, this method of organising books is for you.

Genre of books

When it comes to books, genre can be a complex term to dissect. Without being too specific, genre refers to fiction vs non-fiction. But if you delve deeper, in fiction we have romance, fantasy, crime, literary, etc. And in non-fiction, it's more about the topic so literature, biographies, travel, cooking, etc.

There are then, of course, sub-genres, but let's stick to the overarching genre. I think organising your books by genre is great, especially for mood readers, because you have all your happy rom-coms in one place for when you want some romance and then all your crime and mysteries in another for when you're looking for a darker read.

Authors

This method of organising can be used in conjunction with others. Organising by author, either alphabetically or randomly, is a useful method if you have a lot of books by the same author. For example, I have a lot of Lauren Asher books, so I group them all together so that I know where they all are and it's easier to find.

Series or Standalones

To me, this is quite a handy way of organising books because there's nothing worse than having a series and the books not being together on the shelf. I have quite a few series, or duologies and trilogies, and I've found putting them together - not in alphabetical order, but in series order - is best.

And the same with standalones. If you have standalones in the same genre, by the same author, or the same type of book, it can be good to have all the standalones together, not just for aesthetic purposes but for ease of finding what you're looking for.

Height and Size

This method is one that I probably wouldn't use as the main way to organise my books but it does have some benefits. Organising your books based on their height and size can create a clean look on your bookshelves, but it could split up some series and authors.

I do agree that having books of the same size – or as similar as you can get – looks lovely, but I have books where they're in a series and they are very obviously different heights. The main one I can think of is the UCMH series by Hannah Grace, so for that reason, I don't use this method, but it may work for some of you.

Seasons

At first, this method may seem a bit strange to you, but bear with me. You've heard of mood readers, right? Well, seasonal readers are a thing too. There are a lot of books out there that are Christmas novels, summer reads and even spooky stories.

For that reason, organising your book based on the season they're best suited to can be quite good. I have a shelf just for Christmas books in my room, but I also know I have a lot of books perfect for summer and holidays. It can be disconcerting reading a book set in snowy Vermont in July and the same goes for a book about a Greek island in December, so organising based on seasons can be helpful.

Colours

This is quite a popular way of organising, and not just books either. The Home Edit uses the rainbow method to organise and if you arrange books based on the colour of their covers/spines, it can create a beautiful aesthetic on your shelves.

Organising based on colour is perfect for those who are more cover-focused readers and if you have a lot of books with a specific colour on the front.

TBR (To be read)

If you're a reader, it's likely you know the acronym TBR stands for 'To be read'. This essentially means all the books you want to read but haven't got around to yet. For myself, that list is rather long.

But your TBR can help you arrange your books. On your bookshelves, you could have a section of books you've read and then a section of books you want to read. This way, you know where a book is if you fancy a reread, but also if you fancy something new, you can easily find the books you're after.

Favourites

Another way you can organise your books is based on what ones are your favourites.

I find it difficult to pick out a select few books that are my favourites, so I actually have a whole shelf dedicated to my top reads. But if you're a reader who has a favourite novel, series, etc., then you could arrange your books based on preference and have your top reads front and centre to show them off.

Random

And finally, if you aren't keen on any of the above methods, or others I may have missed, then you can be completely random in your organisation.

No matter what size, genre, type or who the author is, you can put your books on the shelves in any random order.

So, how do you organise your books? Let me know in the comments.

Until next time...