Bookish Questions – How do you store your books?

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How do you store your books?

bank bookcase

I recently sold my beloved bookshelf to make some room in what will soon be little Spot‘s room.  It was my favorite piece of furniture in the entire house, but it was also massive.  The space it lived was literally the only wall large enough to hold it that didn’t have a window, light fixture, or heating duct in the way.  That meant it had to go.  But, at least I know the new owners will enjoy it as much as I did.

books in closetBut, it leaves me with a more immediate problem.  I have to figure out how I’m going to store all of my books.  They are currently in the cabinets above the closet in my office, but I have to stand on a chair or use a ladder to reach any of them.  Needless to say, it is not conducive to being able to access anything easily.  

That means I need to find new (to me at least) bookshelves.  I have a few options. 

  1. I could go with cube style storage, which would give me the depth to display some of my other pieces, but might mean that some of my larger books would be harder to fit on the shelves. 
  2. I could purchase some simple inexpensive pressed-wood bookshelves. These would have to be stabilized so that they could handle the weight of my many, many books.
  3. Or, I can look for some real bookshelves.  New ones would be prohibitively expensive, but I might get lucky at a consignment shop, and find something similar to the bookcase my husband uses.

How do you store your books?  What type of shelving would you recommend investing in?

1 Comment

  1. anna on October 18, 2016 at 9:56 am

    After 30 years of a very poor quality superstore-bought wood bookshelf that was far too small dropping books on my head whenever I brushed too close, DH and I finally had a floor-to-nearly-ceiling shelf made by someone about 2 yrs ago. Also I have hutches with inner shelves that contain my collection of books about Ste Therese, and my children’s books. Still, and in spite of 3 ebook readers and an external hard drive, I have too many books. This encourages me to finally email you the photos of my bookshelf that I took this summer. The shelves are rather deep, which allows me to have space to store the toaster when not in use, and also some of the books that there’s no room for elsewhere. No ornaments on my bookshelf–I’m usually too busy pulling books and sticking them back in for that. Although I do use the extra space in front of the books in the hutches to store things like my canisters of Chinese tea, umeboshi jar, etc. (I’m weird like that).

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