Tripp built me a bookcase when we bought our house. I asked him to build it as tall and wide as possible. He kind of smirked and told me I'd never be able to fill a bookcase as big as the specifications I'd given, and instead made it for me as tall as I wanted, but half the width. I filled it almost all the way up the first day he brought it into the house with all of our books from nursing school, a huge box I had of my childhood books, plus all the books I had acquired since.
When Tripp's mom did a little spring cleaning and brought us boxes of his books, we had to do a little picking and choosing on what to keep and what we could part with. Add in three little boys and their love for books--and you've got an extremely cluttered case of books.
I'm not a naturally tidy person. Keeping my house under control is something I really have to work at everyday, but something about that bookcase in our playroom just bugged me to death. No matter how many times I organized and reorganized those books on that shelf, they just never looked quite right to me. I tried organizing by subject, alphabetically, tallest to shortest, shortest to tallest, my books at the top, then Tripp's, then the kids... I took all the books off and put them back more times than you would believe.
Once I realized that even organizing by the dewey decimal system wouldn't appease me (yes I looked it up and there are crazier people than me out there dewey decimaling to their heart's content), I knew that my satisfaction had less to do with the function of our home library and everything to do with the look of it. No, you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but you can absolutely judge the bookshelves in our playroom because I COLOR-CODED them!
It began innocently enough. As I started taking books down yet again, I began piling them around me by color. When putting them back on the shelves, I began where every rainbow does—with red. Then came orange, yellow, and green. The next shelf was all blue and purple. The third was tricky, but I eventually settled on starting with black, then brown, then gold, tan, and ending with white. The top shelf is for more fragile books like my classics collection and some vintage homeschool books passed to me from Tripp’s mom. The bottom shelf I leave open for toys.
Chicken Soup for the Soul is nestled next to How the Grinch Stole Christmas; The Complete Camaro Restoration Guide has a seat beside Good Night New Orleans. Nevertheless, this system works like a dream for our family. When the boys pick out a book to read before bed, they know what their favorite books look like and can find them easily in the colors. Then the next morning, there’s no question about which section to return it back to. I think Dewey Decimal himself would be proud. I mean, everyone loves a good rainbow, right?
Disclaimer: While I may sweep clutter out of the frame with my foot in order to get a good picture, I will not go out of my way to hide our scuffed up floors, drawn-on walls, and other signs of normal wear and tear in our house, and you shouldn't either! These tired floors show tons of traffic around these books over the years, and that is beautiful to me.
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