Bookshelf Makeover... WITH BOOKS!

Remember this one time I had a blog? Yeah, no one else does, either. But I had to come and post this little redo so I could give a shout-out to Kelly of View Along the Way for her awesome post Save the books: how to style a bookshelf for actual book storage. We moved to a new (to us) house this past summer, which necessitated re-homing of our furniture. We had this giant white bookcase/entertainment center in our basement of the old house, where all our hundreds of books were just shoved in there any which way because grown-ups didn't really hang out down there so... who cares?

But now the entertainment center resides in our main living area. My awesome husband was kind enough to unpack all the books and put them back up pretty much how they had been in the old house:

Not so pretty. But I didn't know how to tackle it so that we could fit all these books and hopefully some of my homeless tchotchkes, so it sat like that for a couple of months until I saw Kelly's blog post. Then I heard angels sing and a light shone down on my iPad and I felt totally inspired. Yay! 

Her basic strategy is to:
1. Take everything off the bookcase.

Can you tell I was also clearing off my DVR?

2. Arrange books by color

This is when I started to panic I'd never get them all back on...

3. Put small groups on books on the shelves, alternating standing and lying down books, and keeping things balanced as you go.

4. Leave gaps you can fill with tchotchkes.

I  followed her strategy to the letter, except that I did keep series together. I just couldn't go that far.  But it's BEAUTIFUL. I'm so happy with how it turned out, I sat on the couch in front of it all that evening just basking in the glow of something actually done and put together in this hodge-podge fixer-upper house.







Most of the picture books and kids' books are down in the cabinets, which is perfect because a) the kids can reach them and b) they're not as pretty.

I'm sure I'll still rearrange all the tchotchkes as I get this house put together, but I'm so happy with how it turned out. Thank you so much, Kelly, for your helpful blog post!