7 Bookshelf Organization Methods

I do plan to make two posts about this in the future, probably for November, about this topic under my Controversial Bookish Topic series and my Bookish Dilemma series. However, today's post will focus on tips for how to organize your books on your bookshelf (or bookshelves).

Before continuing to the actual organization methods, please remember the following: there is no "right" or "wrong" way for organizing your bookshelves. How you organize your bookshelves, as I've said in many similar posts, is ultimately up to you and your preferences.

Alphabetically: I don't think I need to explain this one too much, since alphabetical organization is pretty self-explanatory. You can organize your books by alphabet in one of three ways:

1. Author, Last Name
2. Author, First Name
3. Publisher

Chronologically: Again, I don't think I need to explain this one too much. But this can be a bit complicated due to the fact that some books don't fit nicely into our "real world" perception of time and chronology. However, there are two ways to organize your books in chronological order:

1. Setting in the book itself - what year does the book take place?
2. Number of years the book occurs over - does the book take place in one year or less, in 2 years, or more? (And then keep going up depending on the book)
3. Publication year - go to the copyright page, see when the book was published, and then organize your books this way
1. You may want to use a second organization method once you get publication year out of the way, because you may have 5+ books published in the same year

Color: This is an organization method many Booktubers and Bookstagrammers use because of the aesthetics. The main way you can organize by color is to go by the rainbow - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, white, brown, grey, and black. Where you put the last 4 colors - white, brown, grey, and black - is up to you, whether it's before the red books, in the middle, or after the violet books.

Genre: I would recommend being broad with the genres of your books. Find your books on Goodreads and take a look at the FIRST genre that shows up. Ignore any genres that follow. Also, if the first genre shows up as "[Genre] > [Sub-genre]", only look at the first part before the " > ".

Book Format: By this one, I mean organizing by paperback and then hardback or vice versa, simply because we (sadly) can't put our audiobooks and ebooks on our bookshelves. What you do with organizing your books beyond paperback/hardback is ultimately up to you.

Unread and Read: Separating your books by unread (books you need to read) and read (books you have already read) can help you see what books are still on your general TBR. It can also help you see, from your physical books, what books you tend to gravitate towards based on what you read or haven't read.

Height: This is always a fun organization method to use. However, this one is a bit more technical. Many books of a same genre are either the same height or just half a centimeter shorter/taller than another book. Paperbacks and hardbacks are also drastically different in height. It can look a bit awkward if you don't have a nice, gradual rise in the height of your books (i.e. you have a book that's 6 inches, and then the next book you have is 10 inches, with no books that are in between those heights).