4 Tips for and 2 Benefits of Organizing Your Books Alphabetically

This is the start of a 8-day series of tips for organizing your bookshelf based on the separate organization methods. The post for the 8th day will be suggestions for how to combine 2+ organization methods for your books. By the time the last post is published, I'll make a gadget for these posts that you can access to the right side of the blog.

Many of the tips will also overlap plenty with each other. The explanations and reasonings for each tip, though, will differ based on how you're organizing your books.

With that explained, let's get started.

Tip 1: Decide on how you want to organize your books.

Yes, you've decided on alphabetically. But how are you going to organize it? Are you going to organize your books by the author's last name, their first name, or the publisher? Once you've decided on this, then you can get started.

Tip 2: Completely clear off your bookshelf and any space that has books on it.

This way, you're not shuffling books around on your bookshelf. You'll also have plenty of room on your shelf to get your books fully organized.

Tip 3: Set your books into piles based on the first letter.

This is where it gets time consuming. Yes, you have to go from A to B to C, and then finally to Z. But remember you may not have all of the letters in the alphabet. If your piles get too high, start a 2nd pile for that letter. But if you need 2+ piles for a single letter, keep those piles together. Don't worry about organizing them alphabetically just yet. Just focus on the first letter of the author's last/first name or of the publisher.

Tip 4: Once you have your piles set up, start organizing the books on the shelves.

Set all of your books under the letter A on the shelf. This is where you need to get picky and go to the second letter. However, already having Tip 3 done makes this step so much easier. Let's say you're organizing by last names, and your authors under A are "Anderson," "Adams," "Austen," and "Atwood." Your A section would be "Adams," "Anderson," "Atwood," and finally "Austen." Continue this process with every letter of the alphabet you have until all of your books are back on the shelves.

Benefit 1: Authors and series are kept together.

This is a pet peeve of many book nerds: organizing your books by some of the other methods (i.e. height or color) may separate authors and series.

Benefit 2: You know exactly where to look for a specific author and book.

All of your books by Jane Austen are together? You know to look in the A section, which is usually near the top of your bookshelf. Looking for one of your Brandon Sanderson series? You know to look a further down on your bookshelf for the S section.