Before and After: Bookshelves

I hate dust jackets. Does that make me a bad person? If a dust jacket is removable, I always remove it "temporarily" while I read the book, stashing it somewhere special. Which I promptly forget. I'm convinced that niggling feeling of guilty shame I've been harboring throughout my lifetime is actually a result of all the dust jackets I've lost over the years. Well no more! My recycling bin is now full to the brim with unwanted dust jackets! Look how lovely books are with their embossed titles and color-coordinated spines! Why are we hiding them? How dusty does it get in this little room? I guess we'll find out, but meanwhile we'll be able to actually enjoy these wonderful books. I suppose if one is constantly eating pudding with one's fingers while reading one's books, dust jackets make sense. This one isn't, so YAY! No more dust jackets!Here are the bookshelves before. It always looked so messy. And it's practically the first room you see when you come into Wellington. I love my books, and I loved organizing them alphabetically by author, but let's face it, how often do I need to be able to find a book in 30 seconds flat? Three times in the last year, that's how often. Ah. That's better. For the most part, the fiction is grouped by color. The nonfiction is now towards the bottom. My accordion-file loose sheet music is in the other room near the piano and I think this looks much better!

It was somehow liberating to pull books off shelves and place them with their color-mates. It was aesthetically pleasing and trumped the pleasure I had gotten by keeping them organized alphabetically for so long. Of course the next day The Dot came in looking for a particular book. But it took three minutes to find it and I think I have three minutes to spare on the rare occasion someone wants to borrow one of my books.My plan is to gradually include the color of the book on their corresponding index cards, but that will come. Is my card catalog so cute? It is actually incorporated in my little antique desk that was my very first refinishing project. (Pics to come on a future blog.) So I can still be nerdy with my card filing system and enjoy my beautiful library! Hurrah!