diyjames Great ideas in this ideabook, Alison. Inspiring again! Thanks

kitter Third question, if I do love it and plan on rereading it, would it be still available to me if I don't physically own it (library, ebook, whatever)?

typingmonkey I purged hundreds of my books a couple years ago. Felt good at first, but slowly I began to miss them, and have been filling up again - although a little more carefully this time. It's a sickness I know :)

Alison Hodgson diyjames, thanks so much!

Alison Hodgson kitter, there are a certain number of books I "have to" have on hand. This number could shift if I ever move overseas, of course.

Alison Hodgson typingmonkey, no judgment here. And the great thing is, you purged and then changed your mind. You are figuring out what works for you.

Luciana I never thought I would say this, but we actually have too many books. I feel buried in books at times - it's wonderful, don't get me wrong - I love books and reading - but a certain someone in our house is a bibliophile and can't stop obsessively buying books (3-5 a week). Imagine having to accommodate that!

In the last house we had bookshelves built on the landing, living room, sitting room, bedrooms, not to mention a designated (rather large) library room. We moved in our new house few months ago and had shelves built in the loft and got some bookcases for the office and that's it; he went through the books (probably following some similar sorting rules as yours, Alison) and gave away more than half of them (I'm not joking!) and promised to severely restrict his buying habits. However I know that it won't be more than a year and we would have to consider adding more bookshelves somewhere around the house.

Anyway, great ideabook; I will make him read your article Alison, and hope that he would follow your advice.
(sorry about the photos, these were taken as we were moving in).

summilux If he can read 'em as fast as he can buy 'em, he's a great guy. Luckily for me, I'm a slow reader; my wife OTOH....

Donald There's a great John Waters quote on books, I'd repeat it here but... it's John Waters, I'll let you google it if so inclined, but for me it hits the nail on the head concerning books.

typingmonkey Ha, ha - I looked it up, Donald!

summilux Allison- I had to chuckle at your carpenter story. One of the carpenters working on the exterior of our remodel last summer had pretty much the same question. We thought we had made enough shelf space to last us a few years, but already are thinking of adding shelves. Our solution for mounting shelves off the floor (freeing floor spaces helps spaces look uncluttered) is shown in one photo. We had 13" x 12" steel brackets made by a local metal fabricator. The shelves were made by gluing 2"x7" joists salvaged from the old roof. The result is sturdy and was economical as the joists were free and the brackets were about $20 each.
Another way to deal with clutter is to think built ins when installing room partitions. The drawers in archway I added as an extension to a FP partition holds several hundred CD's and DVD. Even though most of them are copied to hard drive, it's good to have the hard copy handy. OTOH, I don't find CD cases all that attractive. Similarly the area above the drawers has record cleaning equipment- good to have near the record player but don't need to see it.

summilux @ Donald- John Waters is a great guy! I remember reading that he subscribed to an amazing # of magazines; don't remember the number, but it was in the 3 digits.

Dana Veach Good advice, Alison...and appropriate...I've "downsized" to a couple of thousand tomes over the past three years and am trying to halve that number before my next move. 99.5% of my volumes are non-fiction...science, philosophy, theology, music theory, architecture/interior design, gardening, health and nutrition, art and craft how-to, etc., that I refer to again and again...or just enjoy looking at. (And we won't even consider the morgue files for art and writing that I'm currently sifting and weeding...sigh...) I'm a visual and kinetic learner and will never be happy with electronic books. I need to turn pages, feel the colors through my fingers, smell the paper. Yup, I've got a bad case of whatever this ailment is. My motto has always been something like, "I seriously resent having to spend my book money on food!"

saffana this was simply awesome..!!..just what i was looking for..

Jody Thompson After a family vote to put away the T.V. 12 years ago, our house truly reflects 6 bibliophile personalities! My husband and I have a large collection and each of our four boys are beginning their collections as well. With 10+ bookshelves in the house, we occasionally will de-clutter books. On the positive side, all four boys have excelled in school. The three youngest skipped a grade and are in a gifted program. I truly believe their thirst for knowledge and love of reading drives their academic excellence.

Alison Hodgson Luciana, thanks for sharing your pictures! How do you reach the taller shelves in the loft? I don't see a ladder and railing. It's amazing that this is an example of "that's it!" But I so understand.

Alison Hodgson summilux, I love your shelves and drawers, they're so beautiful. Thank you for posting!

Alison Hodgson Donald, thanks for keeping it a family show! I liked his comment about being rich is the ability to buy any and every book you want.

Alison Hodgson Dana Veach, I so understand about paper vs. digital. The latter is great for travel and I read so much online, but it's no substitute for the "real" thing.

Alison Hodgson saffana, thanks for reading.

Alison Hodgson Jody Thompson, I agree completely.

hopesilver It is so wonderful to read an article about too many books! I notice that design magazines rarely even show books in their photos, and I am always looking for more ways to store my books. I have purged my home this year, but cannot seem to let go of many books. If I love them, I keep them. I have a large collection of literature because I love literature, I have every Pulitzer Prize winning novel in hard back, because I read them all, I am an artist and have shelves of art and design books, my husband is a psychologist and has as many as I do.
And then there are those paperbacks we have had since college...great books that I can't seem to let go of. Building good built ins has helped a lot. And, not buying as many books
now has also helped. I thought my kids would read some of these books one day, but it appears the gene was not passed forward, unfortunately for them.
A home without books feels alien and leaves one wondering why.

summilux I'd love to see photo's of how the contributors to this post live with their books. While it's interesting to see the libraries of the .1%, I'd find it much more fun to see how the rest manages their book collections.

tcufrog Someday I want built-in bookshelves. Right now they are housed in black-brown Ikea Billy bookcases which look good but it's not the same as beautiful built-in ones.

Architectural Antiques rolling library ladders draw interest to a space WITHOUT FAIL

Luciana Alison, trust me, 'that's it' is necessary with him. He is in the fortunate position to afford pretty much any book he wants - and he wants them all! He's always browsing some auction house for rare books and I'm sure he's known by all book sellers in town. However, he is quite selective; as an English literature PhD, he has some filters in place (when we first met and I was told about his degree, I didn't know what else to invent to avoid him, as English is not my first language and I was terrorised I would make a mistake in his presence, not knowing he is one of the coolest, kindest and nicest guy you'd ever met - now, after almost 7 years, I have to nag him to tell me when my speech is incongruous (he's taught me some big words!!! :))
About the ladder - we discussed having one custom made - and we would probably get to it some time in the future; until then he is using an extension one.

gillianln Is it bad that I have doubled up on my shelves then started stacking them on top of that in all of my four very large bookshelves. I still have most of my baby books, all of my childrens books, all my uni books....you get the picture???

rashjeh Yup! This is a tough one when living in a house with six people, all of whom are book addicts.
And they are everywhere... in plain sight, on bookshelves, in drawers, below the beds and in any space that reveals itself as hollow and cavernous.
The only way I can get myself to give away, is when it gets overwhelming. Once in a couple of years, we make large piles of what we've outgrown and give them away to schools for underprivileged children, libraries and charities where we are sure the books will have good home and be used as frequently as they deserve to be, and not just lining our spaces in the hope of being read someday.
We live in a really dusty city ( Mumbai) so it is a challenge to keep bookshelves clean, even when they are covered with glass. My pa-in-law has devised a great system, which I have never seen anywhere else, of a transparent plastic device which closes up the slat between the two sheets of glass, so dust just doesn't have a chance. It is quite ingenious, though it may be quite unnecessary in other parts of the world.
But thanks Alison for your writings. As a person who has a mess magically materialize around her, even when she is just sitting down to read; cleaning up has always been a challenge. Your writing propels me to clean up. ( Which is more than my mother could do, despite a lifetime of effort!)

shondawilson Is it ridiculous that I started reading this article and was drawn in because I saw OVERREADERS ANONYMOUS?!! I need that...and then was saddened when I read further and found that you were just joking.

Books galore. It's a wonderful addiction. This ideabook makes me want to run out and repurchase books I've cleared out. I just love the look of a cluttered bookshelf. What is that about?

Love the John Waters quote ( I wish I had received that advice in my raging 20's though!).

Oddly though I love hard copies, I can unashamedly praise my kindle and other ereader's for helping me in my decluttering efforts. Another bonus less dusting.

Choismith Associates Inc. Best article I have read yet on Houzz. As a confirmed readaholic, I thought at first there really was a 12 step program for us, and was thinking as to whether I should look into it. Your ideas regarding shelving and culling hopefully will improve the appearance of my home. Thanks

symamasy Great article for us book addicts. One of the ways that helped me declutter was the electronic reader. All my guilty pleasure books (fantasy, sci-fi, etc.) are on my e-reader.

jeanettchka Rashjeh - love your comment about mess magically materializing around you when you just sit down to read - that is so true of me! Glad there is someone else out there that gets where I am coming from! lol I am a voracious reader - always have been. Love books, magazines, reading online, ebooks and really get anxious if I don't have something to read close by! Books are my friends and it really pains me to get rid of one. The only kind I don't have are audio books, but if my hearing ever goes I will have those too. And Braille if my eyes give out! Excellent article and I enjoy seeing how other people handle their book collections.

mskivers Love to see some ideas for rental apartment. I too have had to reduce my collection and face doing it once more as another move is on horizon. Downsizing apartment in this go round at 69. Like to have as clean a place as I can as housekeeping becoming difficult.

ChelSeeBee Pare down a book collection?!! Honey, there is no such thing as too many books! Just build more bookcases. Even if I never read them again, they give me pleasure just looking at what I have already read. And I have a whole bookcase full of books I intend to read. There is just no better pastime than reading a book.

hillonthehouse First I have to say I love seeing bookshelves that are full of books and not sparse display racks for a designer's placement of stylized accessories. Not to say I don't love design, but I'm a reader and book collector first; and, yes, I have lots of design books. I can so relate to the problem discussed here: too many books and what to do with them. We are planning to sell our home of 25 years this year and move to our smaller mountain cabin, so I have been trying to purge the bookshelves that are in every room of the house, as well as the attic. I finally got rid of my college paperbacks from a major I never worked in, though loved studying forty years ago. I figured since I had rarely, if ever, referred to them in those years of working and child-raising I could let them go. I had kept them mostly out of sentimentality and love for the subject I had left behind. Some nonfiction books do get outdated, after all, though less so in some fields than others (art history, for example). And our access to resources has expanded greatly. But I have to admit it's an emotional tug of war with the desire to have something close at hand that I can pluck off my shelf. I'm a big fiction reader, too, and utilize the local library, but there are certain authors whose works I want to own, or there's too long a wait for at the library. Another problem I've faced is that a lot of writers I love are dead, and the local library often purges fiction from past decades after lending has dropped. I know they have space restrictions, too, but I've been disheartened more than once that a favorite book or author has disappeared from their shelves. More justification to keep them myself! Eventually, I suppose, I'll get an e-reader which might replace buying a fiction paperback, but not a design book. Now I have to figure out where I can build shelves in a small log cabin with limited wall and floor space. I'm thinking of running a shelf at the level of the top of the window on each long wall of the bedrooms, and dreaming of adding a library.

tsudhonimh I've never added up the linear shelf space, but the shortest of these units is 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide, and the tallest is about 12 or 13 feet. There are 4 now.

And all four bedrooms have at least one bookcase, maybe even a full wall of them.

winer20 At the Frick Collection in New York, one sees Mr. Frick's clever way of keeping the tops of his books dust-free. A sheet of Moroccan leather lies across them (of course, all the books are the same height!). Easy to dust a flat piece of leather...

patricia beharry My library is 3ft x 3ft.

MH Canada I like the look of shelves full of books but I'm not an overreader for sure! and recently I replaced most of the books with other display items in my shelves. And my little dog has taken the only empty space that was left in the shelves! for white color shelves I recommend IKEA, and for black and brown HomeSuperstore. The prices were best.

anonyms This is me!!!!!! I had already saved some of these photos even before the article. I am not surprised to now read this week's feature re these photos and learn now similar I am to this person. That being said, I am a working artist and illustrator (not a hobby, in other words) and my collection is largely art books (many rare and much of it reference material for work) so my criteria for riddance includes whether or not it is necessary for work anticipated or not.

cicada2 Looks like I'm in great company. Trying to be brutal for an upcoming move. Ohhh, the pain!

breadangel Great article. It makes me feel good to know that I am not alone in my love for books and my piles and stacks of them in every room of the house. Decluttering has been a problem for me and I am finally getting rid of some old college textbooks and some books I know I will never read. Our local public library has Friends of the Library where I donate my books (and usually walk out with a bag of ones I purchased). Please more articles and comments on this topic.

calikym Best way is to donate your books to a library so they are being enjoyed by others instead of sitting on shelves. :)

rosebud3 Gillianln, I a jealous that you still have your childhood books. I had the full set of the Wind in the Willows books and loved them. Somewhere along the line mom purged them. I wish I had them now and would love to read them as an adult. The only childhood book I still have is The Golden Book of Astronomy.

dotknot I agree that a real book>e-book. However, I am hoping that someday I can get our family collection down to what can fit on one or two bookshelves. I have finally convinced my husband of the merits of the public library. I am trying to only buy e-books of titles I won't likely be sentimental about. I figure it is better for the environment in the long run, and will try to buy only books that may earn a permanent spot on my hopefully smaller future bookshelves. What they need is a way to display what e-books you have on your book shelf- so you can still look smart ;)

Seattle Staged To Sell Another wonderful and practical blog by you. Love it.

I love books. I have them all over my home and I use them as my staging props.

When it come to my own home, I have kept all of my kid's books. We have lots of built-ins in our home to house these and storing these is easy for us. My kids, once a while, still go back and find one of their childhood's favorite books and read them again. Having them organized by theme and style of the books, keeps our shelves organized and easy to use.

I do donate the books that I know I won't be reading. But I hold on to those that I have enjoyed so much. Looking at them just gives me pleasure all over.

We have four different areas in our home with built-ins that we store books and they all have their home theme. The one that I use often is our poetry section.

I mix books with some of our favorite treasures and for me, our book shelves is what makes our house a home to us.

My kids are getting older and now and they are now venturing into my book collection. Can't get better than that.

rosebud3 I am in the process of "prettying up" my house, hoping to put in on the market in a year or two. I plan on buying a travel trailer and "see the USA" for a year and then decide where I want to live and buy/build a small (800 sq ft) home. In the process I have gone through my books several times trying to purge. I am down to 24 sq ft of definitely keep and still left with 12 sq ft of i have to look at them "just one more time" just to make sure I can part with them. About 12 sq ft have already "left the building." And while I am traveling and my books are in storage I am sure in my travels I will pick up a book or two or three or....

Julia Chase When we were moving from Chicago to the burbs and looking at a lot of houses, the thing that really sold me on the house that we purchased was the number of built in bookshelves in the basement. While living in a small condo, I had to be absolutely ruthless when purging - I still miss some of those that I donated. After my son was born, I had to store about half of the remaining books to make room for him. Now, they are all out and I even have some room left (probably not for long, but there is room for a few more shelves to be built).

BTW tsudhonimh, the fuzzy decoration is beautiful!

jtrbug We have been on a 2 year remodel project and most of my books are boxed up. No worry, I've had to buy more just to feel "normal". I all my books friends with spines. Can't imagine not having books to read...reread. My husband and I were both English majors. I love to garden and to cook. He loves history and poetry. We both enjoy art and art history. We have bookcases in every room but the bathrooms. I think of the them as added insulation!

riconsd Books are never clutter and no one, not even Mom, will change my mind.
The best set in "Sex and the City" Burger's family home.
My best trick is line a wall or four of the Dinning Room with 8" shelves and but a smaller table in there, but my table is narrow.

Jo Johnstone Love this! Thanks for the wonderful ideas!

rosebud3 Dana Veach, I can relate. I also love the smell and the feel of a book. For now I am refusing to go the way of the e-reader. Reading email or a website such as Houzz is fine but I really do not want to read a book or even a magazine electronically. Also like you, I have a file cabinet full of morgue files to go through. I was a graphic designer for 30 years with a fine art degree and have been a dog groomer for the last 8 and recently received an associates in Veterinary Technology. In my retirement I hope to get back to my original loves of photography and ceramics. My morgue files include dog stuff, photography, ceramics, design, art and photo computer software tips, travel trailers, and places to see/photograph in the US. I have a lot of purging and condensing to do. Oh, and did I mention 10 cubic feet (5 Rubbermaid containers) of photographs, negatives, albums, and memorabilia to go through? Twenty-three years in this house; 10 years with my husband of 23 years and now 13 years since his passing. Time for me to go somewhere new.

alwaysdesigning I think another way to making books feel organized in our spaces, at least for us, was to categorize them and then sort by author within the category. Somehow it feels better. We have books galore, but they are not willy nilly all over. They are in dedicated bookshelves organized by category as much as possible. We love our books and our two year old grandson has his own collection he loves.

jyule I now do my book hoarding on pinterest. Can now donate or swap my books, and maintain a list of books I want to read and have a visual record of it.

linboteek I decided books were dust collectors and I never re-read books. If you think you might want to re-read a book, you can always get it at the library. So, now I keep a file of all the books I read and rate them. Sometimes, I'll write a short review — so I can remember what it was about and also so I don't buy the same book twice. If it's a 5* book, I pass it on. I only keep coffee table books/reference books that have beautiful pictures and books I've bought and plan to read in the near future. I even got rid of many of my cook books as everything is on-line. On-line recipes are fast and better than digging through books. If I like it, I put it in a file on my computer with date and comments. This all came about after a recent move. I'd look at books that I hadn't consulted in years. Clutter is distracting and time consuming. I also used to think having books, made me look smart. Not anymore.

morgana44 Lucky me I have a husband who is very talented in carpentry (plumbing not so much) and so in 35 years and 5 houses I have had dedicated libraries that he built. The library has expanded from a few hundred in our Brooklyn apartment to several thousand. Rarely do I have duplicates but when it happens I give them away. I'm not 'decluttering' a library because it has a purpose (beyond it's beauty).

Think of the tens of thousands of books in Chatsworth and other great houses in England and . imagine someone wandering into one of those places and saying you need to declutter. Get rid of some of these books. Why? They are books. They were/are collected for a reason.

People who aren't interested in collecting books..don't. They buy, they read, they donate or give away. If that's how you 'roll' go for it because there is nothing wrong with not having books in your house. But if you collect books because you love books and you love living with them...then continue your passion.

Lastly, I don't have books laying around the house unless it's a book we are reading. Once read they are shelved. My books are organized in alphabetical order by author (not by color or size) However it is broken into categories i.e. fiction, politics, biographies, art, interior decorating, etc. and within those separate categories it is alpha order by author. I dust, run the vacuum along the spine and top weekly. Every 6 months I move out the furniture, bring in the ladders and take out every book and vacuum and wash the shelves. It is the only way to live and not provide a home for dust mites and paper mites.

Knowing the work a library entails my children and grandchildren own Kindles. So my passion will be sold upon my death...how about that for irony.

breadangel My father worked at a library of a major university for many years. When the library literally threw out books, Dad would retrieve them from the trash and brought them home. I inherited them and have placed them in a glass front case. My granddaughter lives with me and discovered the books. She commented on the dates of most of them--late 19th and early 20th century. She took one out, curled up in front of the fireplace and read poetry for an afternoon. Her great grandfather would be so proud.

jsjhawaii My kind of house!

thehomestageco Wow Allison I believe you touched a nerve with your article. Proof of my love for reading is that I am taking a break just to read and follow this conversation as your title grabbed my attention. Books are my weakness! I am a Professional Organizer and when my clients love books like I do I find it difficult to practice what I preach to them. I do manage though, but I have a soft spot in my heart for their dilemma . Belonging to a book club doesn't help, but I am a faithful member and user of my local library. Thanks for the article

jebrs Bring your books to the front of the shelves? They're already stacked two deep!! Plus, what do you do with thousands of vinyl albums collected by a musician over the years? They're all already digitized, but since most of them are signed...now that's a storage problem!

gillianne Ah, books. *smile* The comments here are as enjoyable as this ideabook. Thank you all! I've learned to purge books with every move, donating to thrift stores and libraries, and now have a manageable volume of keepers and a changing pile of "to be read" books. (Ah, the anticipation!) In addition to books I love and will re-read, I also keep a modest collection of books to lend to for eventual return to me (though many I pass on with instructions to keep them circulating to anyone who might enjoy them). Those books are resources for house guests. Though so many people now travel with e-readers and tablets that stream films, I find they still appreciate browsing the shelves and starting books they can take with them when they leave and return at their convenience.

linboteek Just another thought.... don't you think it's kind of a waste of life to have to take out all the books and clean them and the shelves a couple of times a year? Lots of dust and mold in the environment. I can see hanging onto children's books for awhile as they re-read them over and over again. I used to have collections where I washed and re-shelved things several times a year (over 100 swans!). Now they are in boxes waiting for me to figure out what to do with them. This all came about when I turned 60. Someone said, "only keep things that are useful or beautiful." Back to the books, before I give them away or donate them, I put my initials in them. That way my mark is still with the book and I'll know if it comes back to me. I do respect everybody's comments on wanting to keep stuff though :-) Just my thoughts....

Stuart Cohen & Julie Hacker Architects LLC As a book collector I enjoyed your article. As an architect I keep building more and more book storage in our home.
For UNIQUE book storage check our "Book Columns" on Stuart Cohen & Julie Hacker Architects LLC.

rosebud3 Linboteek, hopefully you don't take it to the extreme that a friend of mine did. She turned 70 in January. After her mother died and she had to go through her mother's possessions she decided she didn't want her daughter to have to go through the same thing. She got rid of about 90% of her stuff. Too extreme. As long as you are alive you should be entitled to live with things you love and enjoy. Too stark a life is no life. She is in good health, has lots of energy and has longevity in her genes yet she is acting like she will be gone tomorrow.

Yes, I am downsizing. I am trying to get to the place where I keep what I love and what is useful, but I will also keep things that bring memories to mind, because that was/is my life. And I will enjoy them while I am on this earth. And I expect they will go to the dump when I do, but that's as it should be. But I don't think I should be denied the pleasure of having them around me while I am still here.

But, yes, in case of fire...my two dogs and cat first. Then if time, my laptop, and next, my boxes of photos not yet digitized.

hildegard09 My dream house wouldn't just have a library, it would be a library that just happened to have a kitchen, bedroom, bathroom ...

marylovestodecorate Books also quiet down any space. Great acoustics ,especially around electronics! Room calmer like nothing else.

linboteek Hi rosebud3 - found your comments very insightful! My mom did pass away 10 years ago and I had to empty and sell her house in two weeks. My mom was pretty organized but it did make me aware of how much stuff we have. Because we lived far apart, I only took a few personal possessions that I could fit in a suitcase. The rest, all to friends and charity. I'm sure if it had been easier, I would have scooped some furniture etc. I agree, the most important things are dog/cat; computer and pictures also not all digitized yet. I sell unwanted stuff on Craig's List so always have pics of stuff. Once it's gone, I don't miss it and always feel I can get something similar back if I really want it.
Just want to take the opportunity to say Houzz is one of my favourite apps/sites. Very inspiring and informative.

jeanettchka re the comment about books in every room except the bathroom - I have a sign on my bathroom door that says "Reading Room"! lol

breadangel This is a great thread and I love the comments. OK, now for a new question--what do you do about old cookbooks? I have saved the old family ones, with great notes in the margins. But I do have a lot that were gifts, not very good or readable, but I always think that they may have a recipe I want to try. Thoughts and creativity, appreciated. PS, I don't have a lot of room in my kitchen for as many cookbooks as I have.

linboteek Keep the family cookbooks. Epicurious is a fabulous app. For instance, today I have cabbage and don't know what to cook with it... type in cabbage and 518 recipes come up or search the internet.

melides I too was drawn in to this article by seeing the words "overreaders anonymous." I wondered just how many of us there are out there!

I am in the process of downsizing to a much smaller home. I have many, many books and have wondered how I was going to "downsize" my collection. Plans are already being drawn up for built-in bookshelves and some of my freestanding bookshelves will find places in bedrooms. I also made the decision to get rid of books I am not likely to read again.
I felt quite happy that this was all going to work out, until I realised that I haven't been able to get rid of a single book and yesterday I came home with six more. My plan seems to be unravelling!

I am hoping that the reality of the limited space will force me to get rid of books that I neither love nor will ever read again.

Dana Veach hildegard09...and others who collect and love books...we are on the same wave length! Learning is the great love of my life, and books afford me the wondrous adventure of continual exploration of things to which I might never otherwise have access. I grieve over books I've had to let go or leave behind as over the loss of a beloved friend and teacher. The beauty of classic literature...its themes, characters, and language...is an art form in itself that the world is generally too hurried to remember and savor. My mother once accused me of wanting to live in an art gallery and library...guilty as charged!

jeanettchka I find getting rid of books especially hard as when I check one out by looking through it, I continue reading and never get back to tossing the books.

Cline Architects when you've run out of space elsewhere - the staircase is a great place for more bookshelves - check out our solution here.

CAROLE MEYER These rooms are all fantastic!

jahilton Maybe color grouping would work for someone who thought books were decoration. For those of us who have a thousand or two, grouping by subject is the only way we are ever going to find one again. Even then, I looked yesterday for a book I have owned for 30 years that research finally motivated me to read and was disappointed not to find it.
One rainy day last autumn I tackled by parents' cookbook cabinet. After reorganizing it, I found about 10 linear feet that no longer fit. "Oh well," I thought, "these can go out." When I started sorting through them, I was stunned to find books from the 40s - 60s which traced the culinary awakening of "gourmet" cooking in this country. Beautiful books, with charming illustrations and graceful text. They now stand in piles on my office floor. How could I part with them? They taught my family how to cook. But here is my plan: whenever a 'foodie' visits, I will let them peruse this collection and take home a book of their choice. Hadn't thought of that until a friend looked through one, then announced at dinner that she had found it on-line and ordered it. Of course, I told her to cancel the order and gifted her with my copy.

alwaysdesigning speak of the devil http://www.thriftbooks.com/

tingting39 I received the same question "Are you going to be able to fill this?" over and over again when we had our house built, but it didn't take too long to fill them.
We've got 7 readers and a dog (yes, he's got a shelf too) and there are bookcases in every room. 6 years later we are already running out of rooms.
I enjoy reading the article and all comments. Thank you. Some very good ideas, I will first try pulling all books to the front for a different look and I also will look into the book column idea.

My concern is if one day we are going to sell our house, people will start asking "how am I going to fill all these spaces!"

Michele Sherritt I am a bookaholic and found a great website to feed my habit. It also helped me declutter the books I wanted to get rid of. Its called www.Paperbackswap.com. Its run by PBS. You earn credits for the books you post to swap and you use the credits towards getting free books sent to you. However I must warn you. I started this to get more room on my library shelves and once I started getting the free books my shelves filled up again. (But I have lots of To Be Read books)

estherruth Alison, I have so enjoyed reading the last few articles you've had here on Houzz! Thank you for your decluttering insights.

Lee Smith do any of you read kindles? will u ever give up your real books?

gillianln I have ebooks on my ipad for the convenience of not having to take the bulk and weight of books when I travel. Nothing beats holding a book though for a good read. I think there is a place for both - just make it work for you.

jeanettchka Lee: Yes, have two Kindles (one older, one Kindle Fire) and no, I will never give up my real books! For me, Kindles are nice for reading in bed and to take with me when I may have to wait anywhere, I can also read books that are on my Kindle at my computer and do that sometimes, too. Also read regular books - one drawback there is that some of them can be heavy to hold. I read extremely fast and don't bother with thin, little books as I finish them so quickly! I donate books I no longer need to a local organization for Senior Citizens which has a yearly book sale to raise funds for their activities. Also sell some (usually paperbacks). We have several book stores that buy used books and/or give you store credit for buying their used books. Also take magazines to doctors' offices, car dealerships, and other places where folks have to wait - magazines in such places are usually out of date, so I feel I am helping others by doing this.

Lee Smith i don't have an ipad haven't been able to travel, barely have time to read a real book BUT i can see that would be handy. It feels strange not to read as i used to spend hours nose in a book..there's something about the pages, and books that have maps even if fiction.

Lee Smith been so tied up in legal matters feel like I'm missing out....related to the person who is 69 and downsizing because housework is getting more difficult. Relate to that as I try to purge my home of unnecessary everything clothes, linens, furniture STUFFE

must keep the few family pieces, paintings and books. After my mom passed she left a multitude of health related, Christian, and books about the field of writing, very old issue of edgar allen poe, and the Good Earth by Pearl S Buck...boxes of her books...hate to part with any have saved the sifting thru the books for last....wonderful old sheet music as well.

Lee Smith outdated books even fiction can be like time travel to a different era...even paperbacks from the 70's hate to discard.

summilux @ tsudhonimh- your furry bookend is great!

rosebud3 linboteek said "Just want to take the opportunity to say Houzz is one of my favourite apps/sites. "

I have to agree. It is the only site I really follow. I look forward to Sundays and Wednesdays to see the email with a new set of links to check out.

cljakl We are re-modeling and I convinced my husband that a library is a much better use of space than a formal dining room..I use to read 5-7 books/week so have lots of books!!! I have a hard time getting rid of books, although getting better. Recently purged about 15 boxes (Friends of the library). I have and love my Kindle, but it will never replace "real" books. And recipes on line?? How do you do menu planning that way?? I sit down once a week with several of my cookbooks and look thru them for the week's meals, making my grocery list at the same time...many of my favorite authors have been removed from the local library, too old fashioned. I think books are essential and I have been enjoying the pics of book storage.

hildegard09 cljakl I am in the middle of remodeling as well and thought about turning my dining room into a library/reading area. Instead it's still going to be a dining room, but with a wall of bookshelves. I think that combining the two will give me some space to spread out when I'm doing research but still give me space for dinners when the kids come to visit.. plus it's funny and refreshing to see the grandkids checking out the books and asking to read one after dinner. I can't imagine a life without books.

janalive Hmm. Having a book for 30 years and not reading it! What on earth was it bought for? Decoration?
I inhale books. Nothing is more exciting than the knowledge that I have a couple of books on the nightstand (or more likely, these days on my iPad) waiting to be consumed. I was reading early and once the joy of being able to read for myself happened, I never looked back!
I too, believed that reading a book on a "device" was a horror not to be imagined, but one trip a few years ago with a huge tome, which was carted over the pond and around Europe and then back home again, because I couldn't bear to part with it, cured me.
I am now a fervent addict of eBooks. And guess what, they will be in my (virtual) library until I happily fall off my perch, and no one will then have to figure out what to do with them!
Do I still have hard bound books? Oh yes, sigh! Even after the purges of 27+ moves (I stopped counting) with three of them overseas, there are many that survived, residing eagerly on my all-too-many bookshelves. I figure my offspring can deal with a few hundred...

summilux @breadangel- wife has a similar problem. Our solution is on accomp. photo. Her frequent references are on this case; others are in two other locations. When considering the kitchen as a location, keep in mind that 12 inch deep shelves can accomodate most books.
@marylovesto decorate- I've seen your observation about book helping acoustics in audio sites and publicationa awa personal experience.
Alison- thanks for a great thread!

astraea I probably have 2,000 books, between 3 bookcases in the great room, 2 in the finished basement, and another 2 in my home office. And that's after a purge when I moved! When my Mom passed, I had to dispose of the 1,500 books she owned .. but since we didn't have the same taste, and hers were all paperbacks, that was a lot easier! (LOL)

My criteria for keeping books are 1) Do I love it, 2) Do I use it for research, 3) Would I give or lend it to a friend, or 4) Is it too significant/sentimental to give away. I still have a few pre-1900 classics that have been in the family all this time; they aren't in good enough condition to be valuable collectibles .. but I'll keep them anyway!

Only a couple of things really bother me about home libraries .. when books are stored where they can be seen, but really aren't easily accessible (i.e. book shelves above doorways), and when people get a handful of books with fancy bindings or impressive titles, for display purposes only, to counterbalance the knickknacks that fill the rest of the shelves.

Buzz Miller I like electronic books. Saves a lot of space!

morgana44 Linboteek...Cleaning a library on a regular basis eliminates the issue of mold. At least I've never had the problem. (And we moved from New York to the high humidity of the South.)

BreadAngel - I cook ...a lot and have collected cookbooks for 40 years, I have shelves in the kitchen...although grease is the kitchen issue.

Tingting39...never had a problem selling a house with bookshelves. So far people who have bought my former homes loved the fact that it had a library when other houses they looked at didn't.

To folks who wonder about getting older and all the work a home/library takes: for the receord I'm 68. I go to the gym 5 days a week, I do ab workouts, lift weights and the treadmill. This daily 'grind' keeps me healthy, limber and stronger than I was ten years ago.

jahilton janalive, I belonged to the History Book Club for decades, would read the descriptions, be enthralled, order the book, then fail to finish it. Children, jobs, whatever, all kept me from pursuing my passion for history and politics until retirement. History books are not usually page-turners, and need time and quiet to absorb. My problem is that I want to know Everything (except calculus) and figure I will live long enough to make a dent. (Finally found the time to get my Master's in French at 68.) I still want to know what Kissinger said about nuclear war. Laugh at me, but I know there are others out there who are like me.

Jan Smith, I so agree with you. Early editions of Tarzan books, travel diaries, librettos of old opera productions--what a joy to reread and enjoy them! I do have an e-book, which I use when waiting, but usually it is lighter reading (Twain's "Innocents Abroad" now). My vision has deteriorated, and the large font size I can use makes reading less tiring. But for books with photos and maps, or books I want to use for future reference, I still choose paper.

Alison, your articles are too stimulating! :)

jeanettchka I too like the ability to change font size in ebooks. I don't like it that pictures, charts in the ebooks do not increase in size even if the font does! Also, if buying books is one of your weaknesses it is way too easy to buy with 'just one click', though that is an advantage when one has mobility problems and can't get out and about to shop! Both paper and ebooks have their advantages and disadvantages. Isn't it nice that we can choose one or both.

missprisc627 Thank all of you for your ideas-we just moved into a new home and are trying to come up with shelving for our many books. Since my husband is a Pastor we have tons of reference books and commentaries-my rule of thumb is to keep all of the references and give away all paperbacks. I also love to read fiction (my husband says I have a love affair with the printed word!) and I have only bought those in paperback-now I have a Kindle so that eliminates the paperback problem, but I always keep my hard backs-I love having them around me whether I read them again or not. : )

jtrbug In this remodel from hell we are turning our former dining room into a dining/library. After almost 40 years of cooking the family holiday dinners, I've passed that torch on. Instead of our 4 x 8 foot table, I'm putting in a 4x4. Just big enough for 2 to read and research and have 2 more for dinner.The walls will house different kind of bookshelves. The 53' long room houses the library with fireplace, the kitchen and a morning room/ working pantry. I see it as our retirement apartment. Large enough we can be together but still designed with function in mind. I'm putting an i-pad in my kitchen for quick look up, but nothing is like sitting down with a table full of books to delve into whatever project at hand.

So glad to have found so many readers. In the book (ha!), Living with Books, one woman in NYC kept books in her oven because she never cooked!

rosebud3 Morgana44, good for you and your daily workouts! I will turn 63 in April and have had several false starts at the workout routine. Although I am far from sedentary. I groom dogs 3 days a week and have just ripped out the carpet in 3 rooms and am now scraping 2 rooms of 23 year old sheet vinyl from my bathroom and kitchen/dining room. I figure that's quite the workout for now : )

rosebud3 Morgana44 said: "Knowing the work a library entails my children and grandchildren own Kindles. So my passion will be sold upon my death...how about that for irony."

This is sad. One of my best memories as a preschooler was our Saturday trips to the local library. I got to pick out 3 books to read every week. Thanks Mom!

astraea @rosebud3 - I feel the way you do about books .. "old friends" I can share with others, and go back & reread parts. Kindles & Nooks may be convenient, but will turn books into "read & forget" items, like the daily newspaper & even magazines.

rosebud3 Cljakl, re your looking through the cookbooks, planning meals, making grocery list vs. online recipes.

I was going to Weight Watchers meetings last fall and one week we were assigned to bring in a recipe to share. I went online to look for a recipe for cod. There were way too many to sift through. I hated looking up recipes online. After I retire I look forward to buying some cookbooks and having a bookshelf dedicated to them!

rosebud3 Astraea said: " Kindles & Nooks may be convenient, but will turn books into "read & forget" items, like the daily newspaper & magazines."

You are so right about that!!! It is really sad that we are raising a generation of children who will not know the joy of holding a book in their hands. Many schools are no longer teaching with books, but using computers instead.

rosebud3 Alison, you have started quite a great conversation here! Thanks. This brings to mind the old Twilight Zone episode - the man who never had enough time to read as much as he wanted. He ended up being the only human left on the planet, now had all the time in the world to read. Now as he sits on the library steps he drops and breaks his glasses...

Norma Sassone As a retired English and Spanish teacher, who is a reading addict, I have pared my collection down vintage and antique sets of American a British literature that I inherited from my grandfather and the pile of "to reads" next to my bed (usually about 15 books). When we downsized, I donated all my books "en espanol" to a local High School and almost all the other 1000 or so (not so many by the standards here) to the library. Any book worth reading, I usually can find at my local library or fabulous second hand book store. Why not pay it forward and let someone else read a book you loved? No one would have time to re-read all the books on those shelves - I see it as a bit of "braggin" - look at the books I have (or have not) read, and be amazed! I tried the e-reader route, but I agree with the post above -just not the same as reading a book in paper form - only great for trips where you don't want to carry three or four books with you.

rosebud3 jahilton, I can relate. Years ago I belonged to a science book club. I bought a lot of astronomy books. Like you, the description sounded interesting and the prices were quite a deal. Sadly, most have been left unread. I am giving the "heavier" ones to the local university physics dept, some to the local amateur astronomy club, and keeping some for me to read by a toasty fire with dogs at my feet, hopefully in 3 years or so : )

And congrats on your masters in French. I also am a lifelong learner and can't wait until and I can just go take a class in whatever strikes my fancy...archeology, botany, beekeeping, cooking, etc. But NEVER calculus again! Once was more than enough!!!!

rosebud3 Forgot to add....my hope is that when we die we will know everything there is to know!!! Wouldn't that be cool?

JEANIE LOVED this article as much as I have been loving your Ideabooks and recent writings. I am so drawn to your invitation into making life better with less, but without the condemnation or roundly dismissive attitude for those of who treasure things like our BOOKS! Thank-you so much. Also find it interesting what a great conversation and how many wonderful comments on this one. Book lovers/readers are lovely!

Carolyn Zone9alady Kindle-schmindle! I love big books and I can not lie LOL!

gs1938 So many comments tell me the love of books is still with us. And besides all the people that comment can spell....................

rosebud3 gs1938, love the spelling comment! So true!

trail6 Like most of the commenters here, I'm also addicted to books. Lately its been magazines and books on design for small spaces. Now I can stop, since I've discovered Houzz. Everything I need is here. For years I've been giving away my books. Getting ready to do it again. My new house is 360sq ft. You only keep a minimal amount. My comments to someone dealing with too many cookbooks is have family members and friends write down their favorite recipies for your cookbook. I did this many years ago with my parents, one Christmas, as their gift to me. They've passed on and its my most prized book. Thanks for the article.

Kathy Tai It's amazing that your books are so many as the library has. Luckily, you can have a big house with spaces for your books. Thank you for sharing the ideas!

scarbowcow Books are really the only thing I collect. I could leave behind almost everything in my flat apart from my books. I have to get rid of books sometimes (OK, once in 15 years of living here), since I simply don't have any more room for books - they are stacked on the coffee table, tucked into cabinets, etc., because I've run out of bookcases. Using LibraryThing to catalog my books helped me get rid of some. As I took each one off the shelves, I found some that made me wonder what I was doing with it in the first place, and a lot that I greeted as long-neglected friends.

The comment (or article) at the top mentions a house fire and losing one's books. By all means catalog them using LibraryThing. It's easy and quite pleasant - a bit addictive. I bought a lifetime membership several years ago for what seemed to me a small sum - can't remember how much - and I'm really glad to have it. Every new book gets added. I doubt I'll lose my books to a fire (I live in a stone building), but could lose my books in transit to another place. I want to be able to tell an insurer that I know exactly what books I lost, in the hope of being reimbursed to replace at least some of them. Definitely worth the time and the trouble of using Library Thing if you value your books.

rosebud3 trail6, 360sq ft ! Good for you. I am trying to design my next house and want it to be small. BUT I am having a hard time getting it under 800 sq ft.

jules_m I love this article! I can totally relate to the author's way of thinking.

chrisroh One of my favorite things to do is read other's cookbooks. I can spend hours pouring over them. I always wanted a couple of shelves in my kitchen where my books were within easy reach, but it never happened. Putting your cookbooks on your counter may allow them to be in easy reach, but takes up valuable space and looks cluttered. Bookshelves in a house make it a home, but when you make the shelves have a sterile look with all one color, the shelves go from functional to cold looking. All white on the shelves in that living room do not make the room look inviting at all. It screams decorator, not home.

trail6 rosebud3, I've been a proponent for alternative housing and small house design for as long as I can remember. Leave a small footprint. My house is a 12x30sq ft metal, portable building. Its just me, my cat and her new litter. Living with the mindset of reducing your footprint allows you to upgrade your life in other directions which translates into less dollars out the door. Look into the Small House Society, alternative housing, beach lifeguard towers, forest service lookout towers and forest service cabins, state park service cabins, tinyhouses.com for ideas. Its an endless list.

rosebud3 trail6, I am familiar with tinyhouses, a little too small for me. I am a proponent of spay and neuter though and hope you will seriously consider having your cat spayed once her kittens are weaned. There are far too many homeless cats and dogs in shelters to let your queen keep reproducing.

larryboy47 Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without books under the tree. I am a wife and a mom of 3 teens; we all love to read! There were minimum 60 books under the tree this past Christmas (55 last year)... (this includes magazines, fiction, non fiction, cookbooks)...people just look at me like I am crazy when I tell them...

trail6 rosebud3, I also support spay/nuter programs and rescue, no kill shelters like Best Friends, am totally against animal testing of any sort. My cat is a rescue cat that was preg. when she was rescued. There was no way I was going to have her aborted. After the dust settles, I'm taking all of them to get their procedures. I'm keeping all of them. I'm blessed that I'm 10 miles from the nearest village, in rural farm land with a 2 or 3 acre yard on 80 or so acres of working land leased to a local farmer to plant his crops on. I have a bayou in my back of my house surrounded by farms, so I need cats to keep the mice and rats at bay as well as being companion animals. It would be a whole other reality if I were still a city person.

jojosail2 When I was in junior high, my favorite thing was to work in the library, pulling all the books to the edge of the shelf, reshelving books, checking books in and out. I knew the Dewey Decimal System by heart. Loved it. Then I tried a library science class in college and it bored me to tears. I still love books, I am an overeader extroardinaire. My Kindle consumption is about 180 books per year, I select them by length, will not buy anything under 300 pages, the longer the better. Always wanted the Professor Higgins two storey library with the moveable ladder. Now I have a Kindle. Could not keep all the books I bought, had a major problem giving them away. The best way to give books away is to a senior center or convalescent hospital. I moved massive quantities of books from house to house too many times to not appreciate my Kindle.

tingting39 Has anyone read Ann Fadiman's "Ex Libris - Confessions of a Common Reader"? In one of the essays she talks about her ODD SHELF. It is a shelf (or shelves in my case) "whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet ... reveals a good deal about its owner". I grew up in cities and I dream to become a naturalist and travel around the world. I never did, afraid of dark, getting lost in woods and eaten by an animal! So I live my dream among the books and I didn't realize that until I read Fadiman's "Odd Shelf" about 10 years ago and that I already had a huge collection of biographies, journals, memoirs, travel writings of many naturists... so I gather them all from various locations of the house and since then they nest nicely together in a special place in my bedroom--my 'odd shelf'. So my kids know, when mommy suddenly disappear, she is in her reading chair holding one of her favorite and traveling in a different world...

morgana44 Tingting39... That's it! That's what I love about books. They transport you to other worlds, introduce you to other cultures and ideas and broaden your horizon. At least that's what books have always done for me. I open a book and I'm there!

When I was growing up in this little town in upstate New York there was a library in Port Henry which was many miles from our house. Mind you this was back in the day when people didn't hop in the car to go everywhere. But the county (Essex) provided a Bookmobile which came around every 2 weeks all summer. I walked to the Bookmobile and lugged books home and spent those summer days, on the porch, escaping into books.

rosebud3 trail6, sorry about my comments. I really need to keep my mouth shut until I know all the facts. Thank you for taking in the rescue mom. Last summer I volunteered at a spay/neuter clinic for feral cats. They would trap cats in an area of a feral colony, bring them in for a spay or neuter and then rerelease them back into the area where they were picked up. They call it TNR - trap, neuter, release. I had to stop going after I saw they take kittens that were only days away from being born. I also saw them cut open a female only to discover she had already been spayed. Problem with these programs are they also end up picking up pets along with the ferals. This particular program was funded by Best Friends. Previously I volunteered at the local Humane Shelter helping with the Street Cat Society once a month TNR. They were better about not trapping pets because it was the local people who were taking care of the feral colonies who trapped them, brought them in, and took them back. They would also abort but sometimes a volunteer would ask if they could take the mom home and let her have her kittens and wean them then bring them back. I quit volunteering there when we were all asked to commit to this one Sunday ( it was some kind of national spay/neuter day) because the vet wanted to break his own record of how many he could do. I did not want to be a part of such an event - rushing through surgeries, etc. Just because they were ferals did not mean they should not be given the same care as one who had a paying owner.

So many reasons why after going to school for two years to get an associates in Veterinary Technology to become a Vet Tech and worked part time in a clinic for almost a year, that I went back to grooming and won't work in a clinic.

Sorry to go on so much....

rosebud3 tingting39, I can relate. I love wildlife and landscape photography, and had thought how cool it would be as a profession. Then you hear stories of these photographers lying in the cold and snow in near blizzard conditions for days to get that one shot. Or being in the jungle surrounded by gigantic insects! I give them credit, but thank you, no, not for me!

elzmcdaniel I wish there was a way to transfer a couple thousand of my paperbacks to an e-reader Don't want to buy e-reader version of books I have due to cost but would be wonderful to have them all at my fingertips. Any great ideas out there?

hildegard09 Wouldn't it be nice if hardbacks or paperbacks would come with a code to download the ereader copy of the book you just bought? Like they do with blurays, so you don't pay twice for something you already own!.

jeanettchka I do my traveling to other places, times, etc. in books, as I have neither the funds or the physical ability to do it any other way! Favorite books I remember reading as a child were Burton Holmes Travel books, the Occident and the Orient and a book I still have published in the 1920s about Egypt with photos and several chapters about the discovery of King Tut's tomb! Another memory: someone gave my grandmother a large box of old Reader's Digests (when they were all printed articles with no pictures or advertisements) and I spent one summer on a quilt spread out under a big tree in our backyard reading to my heart's content! I was probably ten or eleven years old at the time.

readerskeeter Such a joy to stumble into this amusing group of book people!

breadangel @readersheeter. I agree with you. Not only are the ideas great, the people who are posting here are honest and sincere.

morgana44 rosebud3 ...your story brought tears to my eyes.

gs1938 Booklovers every where. We should unite and form a big club all around the world. We could sell real estate there. I am sure each house we put up for sale has build in book shelves. I love you all.

rosebud3 To my newly found book lover friends...and cat lovers. To those who pray, I need some prayers for my cat Woodrow. He is an indoor/outdoor cat. We live in the mountains. He always sleeps on the bed with me and my two dogs. He went out yesterday afternoon and has not returned. When there is a full moon he sometimes likes to prowl at night. I just came in from walking all around and calling him. I'm worried now, but if he doesn't show by the time I get home from work tomorrow I will be very upset.

Thanks.

Dana Veach Prayer...you've got it.

rosebud3 Thanks, Dana.

jukesgrrl To all of you who have no choice about keeping to a small bookshelf footprint —

I highly recommend http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php
It's an excellent way to send a read book on to a new, appreciative owner and be able to choose a new book to read for yourself. The swap system works for paper or hardbacks, as well as DVDs and CDs, although paperbacks are the most widely traded.

For those of us who read several books a week but couldn't possibly keep them if they wanted to, this is a solution. I hear many of you saying "library." Yes, I love and support my public library system, but they simply do not have everything I want to read. Furthermore, I spend a prodigious amount of time taking my elderly parents and relatives to doctor appointments and attending to them through hospital stays. I simply cannot be carting hardback books around all the time and the paperbacks in my public library are usually not titles I'm interested in.

I used to live in a home that had an office with three walls of floor to ceiling bookshelves. When I moved, not only to a much smaller house but also one across the country, I had to make some hard decisions about what to keep. I chose to hold on to my rather large collection of contemporary poetry, mostly because they are books that couldn't be replaced at cost even if they were available. For my pleasure reading I also enjoy mysteries and other novels; PaperbackSwap gives me access to a constant stream of titles I can enjoy and then find new owners for. For every book you mail away, you get a free one from another reader.

As for the hundreds of poetry books I've kept, they have a happy, cost-effective home in IKEA's great bookshelves called "Billy." Billy bookshelves are very sturdy, easy to assemble, inexpensive, and come in a variety of sizes and finishes. The most popular size, 31.5" wide,15 3/8" deep, 79.5" high, is $99. There are smaller and larger sizes, height extensions, and solid or glass doors can be added.
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/categories/departments/living_room/11685/

Of course I wish I still had my library room, but this is a much more efficient way for me to live at present and I will have oh-so-much LESS to pack when I move on from my current location.

summilux rosebud3- we've spent way too much time worrying about indoor cats staying out past their curfew. Cats are God's way of reminding us we're not in control. We'll pray that kitty has given you a false alarm.

blue_skies77 Quote: elzmcdaniel -
"I wish there was a way to transfer a couple thousand of my paperbacks to an e-reader Don't want to buy e-reader version of books I have due to cost but would be wonderful to have them all at my fingertips. Any great ideas out there?"

Elzmcdaniel, before my last move, I sent a lot of my books to be scanned. I used a site called bookscan.us -- It was very inexpensive. I shipped a large box of books by Media Mail and they cut the books, scan them and turn them into PDFs, and then recycle the books and email you the PDFs.

I got really tired of having to deal with dozens of boxes of books everytime I moved. I gave away most of them, and had my favorites scanned. I think the bookscan.us books cost less than $2 a piece to turn into eBooks, including shipping.

It was so freeing to get rid of all that clutter. And I love being able to read my books on my computer, resizing the pages to make them nice and big and easy to read.

You can pay extra to make them into a format with flowable text like the format used for Kindles and Nooks, etc.

(You can read PDFs on most eReaders, but they usually don't fit the screen that well, and may be difficult to read. They look much better on tablets because of their larger screens.)

trail6 .rosebud3, no worries about the comments. Sorry about your kitty. Just like their wild cousins, they have their territory. That's probably what's going on. Before moving back to Louisiana, I lived in the Olympics in WA State for a few years. I understand your concerns about mountain living. My cat Meka, that's attatched to my trail6 picture took off for 3 days when she was expecting. I know how you feel. As for your comments, you were right on. This being a comment area for books, I wanted to pass on a title you might not be familiar with."Food Pets Die For...Shocking Facts About Pet Food" by Ann Martin. Since you have a strong background working with animals, its a very good read. As you know, a wild and natural diet is optimal. I'm retired now, but I come from both a hard science bakground and a holistic background with animals and humans. This book pairs really well from both ends of the spectrum. I feed my cat only holistic wild cat food. So much better for an immune system.

morgana44 rosebud3...Prayers coming your way. I know how you feel because I've had cats all my adult life...whole familes that lived with us until their passing. I'm down to one cat and three dogs but I feed the neighbors cats who always look a bit hungry. I've gone from indoor/outdoor cats to strictly indoor because of those cute foxes that live in the neighborhood.

Alison Hodgson rosebud3, I hope your cat has returned. Years ago our cat went missing one night and was gone for three. I was pregnant and it was raining incessantly.

He did return, but that was a terrible time of waiting. I'm hoping and praying a safe return for you and yours.

kitter blue_skies77 - having complete books scanned, even if you own them, violates copyright. Hope that you don't run into any hassles if & when someone takes that scanning company to court. Otherwise a great idea!
Oops, forgot to add disclaimer: not a lawyer, do not play one on tv, etc. etc.

deborahmwade I have hundreds of books; mostly for my work and use them as resources and for presentations. The likely hood of ridding myself of any of them is rare.In our various moves, My husband got tired of me taking them off of shelves, packing them and unpacking them. He finally made me beautiful wooden stackable and mobile book shelves. I love them. They can be rearranged to fit any room.

jahilton I have another reason for hanging on to old books. Maybe 20 years ago I helped the elementary school clear outdated books from their shelves (near Kennedy Space Center and still had titles like "Can Humans Ever Travel to the Moon?"). I found two copies of an earth science book from something like the Time-Life series--one from 1965, the other from 1978. The first articles were the same, but, oh, the language difference! The 1965 beautiful version was ripe with adjectives, conjunctions, dependent and independent clauses. Sentences in the 1978 version, covering the same concept with the same photos, was reduced to subject, verb, object. It broke my heart to realize that children were being cheated of exposure to our rich language. When we reread those old novels and even our outdated reference books, we can mourn our loss in the current diminution of language. (Unnecessary to talk about the language of texting and tweets!)

Lisa Fachiri Another "on the button" piece of writing Alison. I am currently waiting for a quote from my carpenter, for a bookcase to cover the entire wall of our family room. I cannot wait to have the whole family's books in one place. I have the romantic vision of all the children choosing a book from the shelves, each evening, for their bedtime read. I have spent hours poring over the many wonderful examples shown on Houzz. The question is, will I have the courage to declutter the books as I move them to their sleek new home or (more likely) see it as an opportunity to build on our already extensive library?

blue_skies77 Kitter, the service is not violating any copyright, they are just converting the format. They destroy the book (recycle it) and do not keep a copy of the file. They are not selling or otherwise distributing copyrighted material, and neither am I.

I bought and paid for all of the books I had converted to ebook form. It just saves me the trouble of scanning it myself. It's like converting your CDs to MP3s to save space, but paying a service to do it for you. As long as they're not keeping the files or original material or otherwise selling or distributing the material, it shouldn't violate any laws.

They are now ebooks that I don't even know if I will ever read, but at least I am no longer wasting space storing them and having to move them from place to place.

My current desk has a hutch with two frosted-glass fronted cabinets. I have been trying to limit my paper books to those that fit in these cabinets. It is much cleaner looking and my paper books don't collect dust like they would sitting on open shelving.

tudormomb LOL! This article clearly hit a nerve! When we moved from an apartment into our new home eight months ago, I was so happy because I had bins of books in storage (mostly cookbooks and children's books) that I hadn't seen in five years! Now all my bookshelves (several new) are too crowded (I like adding interesting tchotchkies to my shelves to keep the books company). We're trying to decide whether to get more bookcases or to bite bullet and do built-ins. I'm afraid to ask how much that would cost!

tingting39 Morgana44, I remember those Mobil library! Except the van came only once a month and it was not free! We lived in a condo so this guy would bring just one box of books up each time. We each child had a limit, so I always made sure my little sister and brother all pick books I wanted to read (what a bully!) and so many times I wanted to ask the guy if I could go to his car and check what else were there, but I was too afraid to! I remember I would wait all day by the window when it was the day. That was long time ago, but think of it now, my love of books must started there and the reason want to keep every book I have read (I had kept many school books by report them lost and my mom had paid fines for them) has something to do with this childhood experience.

Rosebud3, I hope your cat is back with you now.

tingting39 Deborahmwade, can you post a picture of your beautiful stackable bookcase? Maybe if I am lucky like you, my husband would try to make me some?

slowhdrider I know how difficult it is to declutter a library for all the above reasons. After donating over 100 boxes of boxes to my local public library (which is on a very restricted budget these days). I must admit it was a "freeing" experience. I've now put my very favorite reads on my computer and kindle.

corinan What a fascinating and emotive topic. Only a few comments I would like to make:

When does book collecting spill over into hoarding?

I may consider a Kindle or similar when they make them as robust as books, able to be dropped and trodden on. Also, you a basically renting, not buying.

If you live in earthquake-prone territory, I am sure you have all shelves fastened to the walls. I learnt the hard way (and had to deal with my teenage son saying I told you so...)

Norma Sassone Don't get me wrong: as I mentioned above, reading is my greatest pleasure in life and I do have a couple dozen black and white compositions books in which I have notes and comments on many of the books I have enjoyed, but keeping all the books you have ever read (or purchased) is a form of socially acceptable hoarding. I think you could know if it is actually hoarding if you NEVER get rid of any books, or perhaps only a handful a year. If, on the other hand you keep less than half of what you read, perhaps you just treasure particular books. Getting all panicky (and thinking, "oh but i just might read that again SOMEDAY") at the thought of giving something away - well, that is hoarding.

jahilton Norma Sassone, I started to feel bad after reading your post until I realized that my collection is a historical reference library, to which I refer almost daily. Like you, I keep old editions of books and great literature. Happily, I discovered that most great old lit is available free on kindle; and I rarely read modern novels.
Funny, but while dealing with a young customer representative on the telephone the other day, we learned that he and I have the same complete works of Shakespeare (only mine is from 1936)! Don't ask what that had to do with my cable problem.

morgana44 Interesting that we even have a discussion on 'decluttering' a library but now a discussion about hoarding as it relates to books!

I have to laugh when the terms eccentric and insane come to mind.. If one is wealthy and odd they are eccentric and if they are odd and poor they are downright insane. Folks who store a lifetime of junk in warehouses are collectors but those who can't afford the warehouse and live surrounded by their junk are called hoarders.

We use to really admire brilliant people but now we derisively call them nerds. Folks who collected books were thought to be interesting and dare I say 'well read' but now we are messy hoarders. Arugula use be a bitter green that some people loved but now we call people who eat arugula elitist. I could go on but you get the point.

Where did all this stuff come from...and I don't mean the cluttered libraries or our cluttered minds.

I say this with a smile on my lips, a twinkle in my eyes and a tumbler full of Amaretto Disaronno in my hand as I sit in a library cluttered with books!

Wait...you say it's too early. Balderdash it's 5pm somewhere on this overpopulated planet.

readerskeeter ...and I bought four more books today. ;-)

jeanettchka I bought 6 books day before yesterday and have already finished two of them and started on a third! My grandchildren always check with me when they have been assigned a book to read to see if it is in Gma's library before bothering to check the public library! :

summilux On the hoarding thing- It's a form of OCD. But there's functional OCD (an obsessive and compulsive bent is practically a job requirement in some fields) and pathological OCD. Where you fall is best left up to you and those that care about you. If your family hates it- there's a problem. BTW, I'm hoping rosebud3 found her cat.

jtrbug In our community there is a mini-movement going on: personal free libraries. One woman had a sheltered bookcase built in her yard and a sign staying the books were free. People take/return/add to the collection. I don't have the space in my front yard, but I love the idea. Even in our last round of a foot of snow, people made tracks to read. Love it!

Christopher Callen Quite wonderful but i have a goal to go one step further and go Kindle for 90% of what I own ---will see ---I am one of those ---A house is not a Home without books and bookshelves. Thank you for helping me keep my eye on the prize ---Simple LIVING !

pjtime I also read a lot and have a few book shelves about the house. Books speak to me and often just viewing the covers will transport me into a dream either of my past or into the story. I use books and magazines with attractive covers as decor and sometimes just walking into a room my eye will light on a particular book and off I go....

One of the favorite features of my home is a large built-in bookcase in my rather large bathroom. It gives the impression the bath is part of the home--not just to get ready for work--and slows me down. I have an extremely comfortable mission style chair at one end of the bathroom, and while I'm waiting for the tub to fill or if I have a few minutes to wait before going to work, I'll sit in the chair and read. I've often caught my teen-age son sitting in the chair reading. Since we have a big house, I once asked him why he's in the bathroom reading, and he says he just likes it and the chair is one of the most comfortable ones in the house. I have to agree with him. It's nice to have a bathroom so comfortable you want to sit down and read. I also use those those two criteria for keeping or discarding books. It has to be pretty special for me to keep it around.

Alex This bookshelf is centrally located in my home, many times a day I walk by and get inspired

Rebekah Zaveloff Thanks for including our cozy farmhouse in your ideabook!

Melina Gaspar Cool. Will be definitely one of my favorite rooms when I built my own house :) Thumbs up!

pjtime Jukesgrrl--Thank you for the recommendation for PaperBackSwap. I signed up for PaperBackSwap and will try it out. Living in a very rural area, it's difficult to find enough books to keep up with my reading. The Ikea Billy bookshelves recommendation is also appreciated.

M H Canada--Thanks for the recommendation about HomeSuperStore.

Donald--Love the Jim Waters quotes! I'd never heard of him before, but I live in a black hole...LOL. Houzz helps me crawl out every once in a while!!

It's nice to see bookshelves filled with books. I rarely see books in homes any more...don't know if that's a commentary on my friends/acquaintances, but I was beginning to think reading was a lost art. Obviously I'm wrong, and now I don't feel so eccentric!

vaudegal I will add another reason for the collecting obsession: preservation. I have a few out of print books with beautiful old bindings and illustrations. Not sure what I'll do with them. The library doesn't want them. Also, in this age of e-books, it feels like an important conservation practice. It's so nice to hold an appealing physical object that doesn't have a screen or require electricity. Finally, there is the sense of comfort and spiritual satisfaction in having a house filled with books. It's what a friend of mine would call "true wealth."

Dana Veach Amen, Vaugegal!

William Brooks As a rabid book collector I make no apologies for keeping too many books. Books that interest me are seldom found at our small local library -so I buy them. As libraries morph into computer labs and dime novel storage houses, someone has to keep hard copies of otherwise unavailable works. You can always order a book from the county library and wait for the other 300+ people ahead of you on the list to read it and send it back. Life is too short for that.

Dana Veach Amen, again!............and Vaudegal...sorry for the miss-spelling/typo!

jeanettchka I will always buy books. I have many varied interests and often have to resort to intra-library loans, college libraries, etc. As William said, life is too short for that! Books for me are a necessity, not a luxury or a hobby.

rosebud3 summilux, sorry to report I fear my cat has crossed the rainbow bridge. It's been 10 days now.

rosebud3 Morganna44, like your style, especially your latest post!

Dana Veach Rosebud3...so very sorry to hear about your cat...Thanks for letting us know.

readerskeeter So sorry about your cat Rosebud. I lost two of my "little comforts" in January so I understand. Cats and books have always been in my life and to me, a house would never be a home without both. (Add good food and good music and I'm not simply home, I'm in heaven.) As much as we work toward responsible pet ownership there will always be needy kittens every spring Rosebud and lots of older cats need help. When you are ready there will be one ready for you too.

Alison Hodgson rosebud3, I'm so sorry. It must be especially hard not knowing what happened. I'm sorry.

I meant to tell you, you may want to check out the home that's featured in the first photo above:


I believe it's only 450 square feet but it lives so much larger. Regardless, it's a beauty.

rosebud3 Thank you Dana and readerskeeter. I had my Woodrow for 12.5 years. He would love to cradle his head in my cupped hand while we slept at night. He will be missed.

summilux Rosebud3. We're so sorry to hear the bad news. To many of us pet are family members. We've had close calls with our oldest cat- Ernie. After our last visit to the vet, our indoor cats are indoors 24/7. Our other cat was grounded also. This was partly out of fairness to Ernie, but also because GF, even though she is a sweet and gentle cat with us, is a prolific predator.

morgana44 Rosebud3 I am very sorry to hear about Woodrow and I know how terribly you miss him. Cats (and yes dogs do too but my first love are cats) have such personalities and simply can't be replaced. My thoughts are with you as you go through this grieving period.

rosebud3 When I got Woodrow at 3 months old I tried to make him an indoor only cat. When warm weather came and he was 9 months old and windows were open, he first pushed out my bedroom window screen. Caught him right away. A week later he tried to push his way out my front storm door. He got caught. Head and front legs hanging outside. Butt and back legs stuck inside - draped over the metal bottom of the door like a fuzzy towel. I gave up. Put a harness on him with a long line and walked him around the property line. He always stayed close to the house and was almost always in by dark. Like GF, Woodrow was a fairly good hunter too. But mostly he loved to lie in the sun and take dust baths outside in the front yard.

summilux Rosebud3- Woodrow sounds like quite the character; some cats hear the call of the wild more than others. GF was a stray that adopted us (Girlfriend got her name as Ernie's playmate when we first noticed her). As happy as she was to join the family, she was, for the first few years, hell to keep inside when she wanted out. We have several torn screens as souvenirs from that era.

Jill Barklow Alison~My next house will be built of magazines, they were stuffed so tight and to the top of the boxspring, they were literally one of the few things that survived a wildfire that I lost my house in. So, that must say something, I read with delight, the decluttering "but getting to keep the books or what is most important to you" A wildfire burns very HOT and it was things made of clay that were really the only things recognizable. But the form of the magazines stacks were definately there, and when the metal bed was picked up, in the middle of the burnt pile you could actually see pages unscathed. Even though our refrigerator could fit in a shoe box after the fire. I do digress but, I love the article and could relate~Thanks!

rosebud3 Alison, I actually had seen the tiny house feature with that 430 sq ft house. I did a few screen grabs from it.

Interiors Unleashed I do feel at home here among a bunch of bookies. I like to keep my beloved cook books close in the kitchen. However, the really well loved and hand me down ones look a little too worn for display on open shelves. Books trump food for pantry space in my kitchen. I had a cabinet built for the books first, still waiting for the mud room pantry update for storing food. This cabinet did not take up much space and I can't wait to have it all for kitchen/food related books!

Sheila Schmitz Book lovers, a story from this morning's Houzz newsletter that you might like:

revss A clergy colleague went from being a "settled" minister to an Interim (1-2 yr. posts). Since he would be moving frequently he purged his library from 5000 volumes to 100 that he could easily move. Said it was the best spiritual exercise of his life! Unfortunately, at 70, I'm not there yet, tho' having moved a number of times I've culled a lot over the years.
Liking to read before sleep, I buy novels at Goodwill or Used bookstores. Have a large basket in my office of these, then pass them on. Cheap, and I don't have to worry about returning on time or waiting in line!

schylar What should we do if we flip a house

montanasherryc An entire wall of floor to ceiling bookshelves was a non-negotiable in the new wing. I am seriously considering a rolling library ladder, even though we only have standard eight foot ceilings, just because I love them so.

nellesworth I think it was Cicero who said, "A room without books is like a body without a soul." My dilemma exactly.

My husband and I keep several hundred books, all catalogued digitally (along with movies and video games) using Delicious Library. Our biggest problem is the SIZE of our books - some are so large and heavy (mostly reference texts) that they have actually broken our bookcase shelves! I suppose I'll have to design and build some metal-reinforced library style bookshelves to keep our collection from falling through the floor.