Forgotten Vintage Children's Lit We Want Republished! discussion
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Mod
(What's even MORE irritating is the sudden, happy discovery that most of your vintage YA paperbacks (Puffins, Piccolos, Targets, Corgis, etc.) have the same dimensions, and then when you order another Piccolo thinking, "Ah, this will fit on that shelf with the others!", you find to your horror that some (view spoiler) decided to make it 1.5 cm taller and added 0.5cm to the width.. just because. >:( Drives me spare).
Shelving is expensive! We trying a low cost solution. We found some wire storage cubes similar to these: https://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/stor.... But the sides are mesh wire similar to these: https://www.ironaccents.com/products/...We’re not going to put ours together with the included round plastic connectors. We’re going to use small metal j-clips to put them together for a better look.
Mod
I've got NONE. I'm in the market, so to speak! XD"
If you keep a record of where you shelve books then you won't need to organise them. Shelving is more a question of what pleases you aesthetically. I have a friend whose books are more or less randomly shelved and I like the look. I shelve mine in broad categories but not in any particular way within those categories. I must admit that since my last move I've lost track of where certain books are. I have a bookcase for books I've bought recently because if I put them in with the general population I'll forget about them. And then there are the stacks of storage boxes full of books in my rec room but we won't talk about those. I was supposed to be storing them for my brother temporarily but now it looks as if they're mine. Those are the stinky ones.
Wanted to add that the cubes I mentioned above with hold a variety of book sizes
Mod
These look about the same dimensions of my IKEA Kallax/Expedit unit. I find them great for kid's books (LARGE!), but frustrating for novels, because I have to then sort them both sideways and upright to use the space efficiently, and all the book storage advice (which clearly I ignore) says you ought not to stack horizontally... :S
But yours look nice! Airy! :) And maybe you don't have the depth problem of the Kallax/Expedit - I can get like 2.5 rows of books in, which is itself inefficient and annoying... At least with the mesh boxes, you can see what's behind!
I also have another ladder-esque shelf, not IKEA, and it has yet another spacing, again one where a standard novel only comes about 60-75% to the height allowance. The rest of mine are on free-floating wall shelves (weight limits), or are on top of existing furniture (consoles, sofa tables, etc.).
We have those Umbra invisible shelf brackets on the walls as well. I clustered books there by colour, but of course there's a weight limit. At least these aren't limiting by space, though the bottom-most book has to be deep enough to swallow the bracket inside the back cover.
I have heard of booklovers loving the Billy shelving system at IKEA - anyone vouch for that one?
Mod
Mod
These look about the same dimensions of my IKEA Kallax/Expedit unit. I find them great for kid's bo..."
I love my Billys. I wish I had more but we don't have an IKEA here. Plain, unobtrusive, sturdy, easy to assemble. I like the Sauder bookcases as well. I have several of those, some with oak trim. And I have antique/vintage bookcases and some that my father built for me.
If they're not valuable, stack the books horizontally. None of my books have ever come to harm while horizontal as long as the weight distribution is even. Light is far more of a problem.
The latest of my neverending reshelving tinkering projects is ordering historical fiction by date of the story. Realistic fiction is already separated out (as is fantasy, nonfiction, "grown-up" books, etc). I won't pretend that this (or any) shelving method is perfect. But it's helpful for my purposes, which is probably all one can ask for. Don't try to pin me down about time slips and similar things. The book "Peter" by Anne Holm is an especially tricky one - he travels to three different historical periods. So for the most part, time slips are on their own shelf. We have standard cheapo faux-wooden shelves. The large picture book collection is kept on an entirely different floor, so nearly everything is fairly uniform in size - 5 or 6 shelves in a 6-foot bookcase, plus a row on top with bookends. There are occasional (frustrating) exceptions.
And there are frequent cases of double shelving (mostly I try to keep long series hidden in the back - I won't forget about them, but I certainly might forget a single book by an author with no other books). This is just how it is - there is only so much wall space for shelves.
Mod
Yeah, light... It's just photons and the attendant photo-bleaching that's the problem, right? Tinted glass (or acrylic) doors would be cool..! :D
Mod
I did that, too, when I was living in a small town where the simplest way to get bookshelves was to have the local undertaker/coffin-maker build them for me. He was the go-to guy for woodworking. XD
Mod
Oh, I like that! :D I have a Switzerland shelf (all the juvenile fiction set in Switzerland), but haven't got beyond that... I like your approach - might try that!
Mod
Did he offer to line the shelves in velvet? XD
Any words of wisdom on best height and depth to aim for? (Billy-esque spacing?). :)
Mod
It depends on what you need. I prefer shelves with a depth of 8 or 9 inches because they take up less room in a hallway or wherever space is at a premium. But you'd need deeper shelves for art books and picturebooks and if you want to have two layers of books. Billy is 11" deep and I have some units that are 12". Height - as high as you can go provided that they're secured to the wall. In an earthquake zone they should all be secured but I'm fatalistic. Crushed under a pile of Victorian novels... What a way to go! If you had custom-built shelves then you could have them designed for the books you intend to put on them. The DIY units all have too much space between shelves (which is why horizontal stacking can be inevitable).
Mod
The Gormenghast trilogy is back there. I refuse to DNF a book once I've started, but I can take a glacial age to finish one, too. ;) Currently out of sight, (mostly) out of mind.
Mod
No joke - the Govt bureau of safety here lists CHOCOLATE as a requisite component of a survival kit, both travel-sized and stationary (i.e. for the bomb shelters we have as cellars/basements.... they all have to be bomb shelters, with those vault-like doors, too!). ;) Ah, Switzerland!
So a bar of Lindt (not as tasty in N America - they manufacture their own over there) or similar might not be remiss.
Mod
I have LED camping lanterns. Fantastic. We have a lot of power outages.
Mod
I have eight Billys and I agree - they're an excellent value. I could spend hundreds of dollars on well-made, real-wood bookshelves, but these work beautifully. I got the "hats" too - that's what my husband calls the extra shelf you can add to the top, so mine are seven shelves high plus the actual top. Because of where they are in the house, I don't mind the 12" depth. This also allows me to save space because if I have a long numbered series like Girls of Canby Hall, Sweet Valley High, Babysitters Club, etc., I can put a few spine-out and pile up the rest in the back.
Mod
Those look nice! Thanks for the vote of confidence - I'm starting to understand why Billys are as popular as they are! :)
I arrange fiction alphabetically by author, non fiction by subject, history by era. Some large format books which don’t fit on standard sides shelves are shelved separately. I was lucky when we moved into our present house as I found some ready made shelves in the cupboard under the stairs which had enough space for all my fiction.
I've got NONE. I'm in the market, so to speak! XD