Now that we’ve moved back into our old house, unpacking all of our stuff and finding places for it, I just have to wonder… where in the heck do bookish normal people keep all of their books?
My in-laws have a dedicated library in their house, and while we were house-sitting for them, they were gracious enough to clear out several shelves for us so that we could put all of our books (more or less) within easy reach. But our house is a fairly small single family home, with a main floor and a basement. It’s about 2,300 square feet, with four bedrooms and three bathrooms—which is plenty of room for our small family—but there isn’t much space for bookshelves.
This is our main family room (please excuse the mess—small children and all). It has a little bit of shelf space by the stairs, which we could use for maybe a few dozen books, but we have a lot more than that. Boxes and boxes more. Behind the camera is the kitchen/dining area, so there isn’t much space for books there. And everything else on this floor is already taken, with bedrooms for the kids and a master suite for my wife and me—and my wife doesn’t want to cram all our books in our bedroom. With another small child on the way, I can’t blame her.
This is the downstairs main room. Again, please excuse the mess—we’re currently using this area as the kids’ play room. The bookshelves either have games or kids’ books, so those are taken. Behind the camera is a kitchenette area that we’re currently using to hold our food storage (and we have a lot of it, so that’s probably not going to change). Besides the main room here, there are two bedrooms, one of which is currently for storage, and the other is an office for my wife and me. Again, there’s not much space for shelves in either of those… and besides, we’d rather have our books out where people can see them (or at least where our kids can easily browse them).
What I suppose we could do is get rid of the massive TV (my wife won it from her work during a holiday raffle, and we don’t use it much, so it wouldn’t be a big deal to downsize) and move the dresser into another room, so that we could use that whole wall for shelves. That might fit all of our books, if the shelves stretched from floor to ceiling. It would be a big project, since we would have to use all of that space—and would probably also have to move the light switch—but it could be done.
Another idea I’ve had is to install shelves in the family room up above the main window. We could probably wrap it around most of the room, even into the dining room area if we had to. Have any of you done something like that? I’m a little bit worried it would make the room feel cramped, but it is a place where we could put a shelf.
Other than that, I’m kind of at a loss. I could try to get rid of most of my books, but I have no idea how successful that would be, since I tend to acquire new ones as quickly as I lose the old ones. It’s a blessing… and a curse. I’m sure that most of you can relate.
In any case, what do you do with all of your books? Where do you keep them? What would you do if you lived in our house?
I have two bookshelves, approx 75″ tall x 36″ wide, and one that is approx 60″ tall x 36″ wide, and small spinning one that is approx 3′ x 1′ x 1′. All of them are specifically sized for books. The tops get used also 🙂 These are in my man cave. The rest of my over 3000 books are in moving boxes in the furnace room.
This is why I switched to Kindle in 2010 🙂
I . . . can’t really help you. I have bookshelves in my closet (more books than clothes), and I recently remodeled and re-organized my bedroom and added another bookcase to the two I already had. I have books double-stacked on shelves and books carefully situated on top of the bookcases, and my collection has sprawled out into the family’s bookshelves.
I do try to buy physical books mostly when I’ve already read them once or twice and expect to do so again, or I’ll go on a bender at a book sale and get a bunch of random ones ‘for reference’.
Anyway, my main suggestion would be to look at inside walls and see if the drywall could be safely removed to create shelves between studs. From your pictures, there also seems to be some space beneath your windows where you could put a few long, low bookshelves.