How to Organize Books and Get a Clean, Decluttered Room

There are few things more nourishing to have around the house than a good book. But if you’re a voracious reader, it’s easy for books to begin to pile up and take over.

Decluttering your books and your room at large can be a breath of fresh air. Not only does it make your book collection easier to sort through, but it can actually be a positive move for your mental health as well. A happy room leads to a happy mind, after all.

But how do you start making sense out of an overwhelming mess? Read on and we’ll walk you through how to organize books so that you have a neat and clean reading space.

Get Rid of What You Don’t Need

We all hold on to possessions longer than we should: it’s a natural part of being human. But eventually, this clutter can add up, eat up our space, and leave us feeling overwhelmed.

Take a look at your own book collection. Are there certain titles you’ve already read and probably won’t read again? Consider getting rid of them.

Getting rid of books doesn’t mean throwing them away, of course. It means offering them away to friends or family or donating them to libraries or book stores. Instead of thinking of the act as getting rid of a book, think of it as giving the book new life in the hands of a new reader.

Organize Hard Covers and Paperbacks

One way to quickly provide a sense of organization to your reading collection is to split your books into hardcovers and paperbacks. You probably have more paperbacks than hardcovers, unless you’re a specific sort of collector.

You can put your nicer looking hardcover books on a high shelf and slide your thinner, more accessible paper books together lower down. With this simple step alone, your reading area should already begin to feel a lot better.

Adapt To The Space That You Have

Sometimes the space we have for our books doesn’t match the size of our books themselves. We have too many novels for the length of a shelf, or the height of certain books is too large for the given space.

This often results in us tossing books to the side, leaving them on other surfaces, and creating a general sense of mess. If this is you, you’re probably itching to have a clean environment.

But you don’t always have to include all your books side by side.

You can also stack your books up and down, put them on top of shelves, or even slide some under your bed. It’s important to use the available space you have in an intelligent way as opposed to always trying to cram things perfectly into a bookshelf.