Monday, November 5, 2012

Purging and Reorganizing My Bookshelves Part 2

I'm finished! I spent most of Saturday and Sunday finishing my reorganization project. Check out this post to read about the first part of the project.

Here is the Master Bedroom after I finished removing books I don't plan to read again.
Note that I even have four empty shelves!

Here is my office ready for the adult TBR books. 
The bottom shelves were filled with a variety of teaching materials. I sorted through all of them too. Now my teaching stuff is all on just one shelf. I had many outdated materials and way too many ideas for the years left before my retirement.

My next step was to organize all the boxes, baskets and bags of TBR books. I began by making piles all around my family room and master bedroom. I sorted all of the books by author and then alphabetized each letter completely. For efficiency in the use of shelves, I alphabetized the hardcovers and paperbacks separately.

Here is the finished TBR room.
I have so many empty shelves that I am almost tempted to go book shopping. After I took this picture I did use three shelves on the right side bookshelf for some of my videos and DVDs. But there are still four completely empty shelves. 

Here is the finished office. Now I can see the ugly carpeting that has been in that room since I moved to this house in 2001. I haven't used this room for much other than storage. I finally took down the 2010 calendar that was on the wall.
During the whole project, I removed 1075 books from my shelves. I had seventeen bags after I did the first half. A friend stopped over and took eight bags of books for herself and a friend. I brought nine full grocery bags to the public library for their Friends of the Library book sale. This week I filled fourteen bags as shown here:
I'll give my friend another chance to sort through the bags and then bring the remainder to the library next weekend. 

Now I just have the large walk-in closet in the master bedroom to clean out. It is filled with 12-15 boxes of books and lots and lots of clothing that I have just tossed in there at each season or size change. It will be sort of like going shopping. I hope my enthusiasm for cleaning and sorting doesn't wear off before I get the closets cleaned out. 

Wish me luck!

7 comments:

  1. I need to do this haha!
    I a gonna try ARCycling a blog that donates to bloggers and librarians!

    ReplyDelete
  2. it make me dreams so many books but being intern,ational i'm out of teh picture most of the time^^ still thank you for your generosity

    ReplyDelete
  3. What a truly impressive undertaking! I've been trying to do some of mine but it is taking me ages. It's like I have book ADD because I get totally distracted by whatever I take off the shelf. ::sigh::

    ReplyDelete
  4. I am so impressed. I need to do the same. You can come to my house if you still have energy after you are finished.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the opportunity. However, it took me eleven years to get the urge. Can you wait?

      Delete
  5. Just a though. Do you have a plan for all the ebooks. I really do not have them in any organization at all. To make it even worse they are on 3 separate ereaders.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Almost all my ebooks came from Amazon which archives them for me. Those I bought from other sites are in a file on my computer. I really should back those up onto a flash drive but haven't yet. I bought most of them at Baen and can also download them again if something catastrophic happens to my reader or laptop.

      I also list all my ebooks on my LibraryThing account. If I want to read something, I can just download it to the eReader I'm using right now and begin reading. I haven't gotten to the stage where I feel the need to organize them more than that. LibraryThing tells me I have 1059 ebooks with 741 marked TBR.

      A lifetime LibraryThing account might be the best $25 I have ever spent.

      Delete

I love getting comments. Let me know what you think.

This blog is now officially declared an Award Free zone! I do appreciate your kindness in thinking of me and I am humbled by your generosity.

Your comments are award enough for me. Comment away!