We received such a sweet email from a husband about keeping up with his wife’s reading habits. Here’s the request we received from Mike:
My wife is a huge fan. I have heard nothing but good things about you and she is the reason I am seeking your help. This seems like an issue you or your readers may have run into before.
My wife is a voracious reader and the hide your wallet section always makes her very happy. However, the down side of this is she has a ever growing library…I would deem it vast beyond measure. Book storage is a huge problem and she has even been buying digital copies.
Do you have any suggestions about double or triple stack bookcases I can build for her or purchase? I love that she reads so much, and certainly want to support her….however, I am afraid we are going to have to start storing books in the fridge.
I have started sketching out something that I might be able to build that I am calculating will store about 750 books in a mostly standard 36″ x 84″ bookshelf size. That being said, if any of your viewers/readers have any suggestions I would be more than happy copy/steal their ideas. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery if memory serves.
Sarah: So this is the most adorable email. What a lovely person you are, Mike!
Bookshelf overflow is a problem we can all relate to, so I figured we could share our suggestions and solutions, and then ask the Bitchery (because y’all know everything) for ideas.
I culled my paperback collection to a very, very few number before and after we moved. For years, the standard Ikea Billy bookshelf was my go-to. I could stack mass market paperbacks in two rows with some upright and some laying down across the upright books. Then I could fit another row in front, also laying down on their sides.
I did some Google searching and found a few options:
This LibraryThing thread has some suggestions, including one person’s use of Billy Bookshelves from Ikea:
Because you have to leave the middle shelf in place, you can have up to 8 shelves to fit mass markets (you can see this in my photo as the first two bookcases from the left, and the rightmost one.) This will result in 2 slightly different heights of shelves, but it’s not really obvious when looking at it. All of my shelves are double stacked, and you could average about 25-35 paperbacks per row (50-70 per shelf) though I average about 75 per shelf due to some warped space-time). Fewer if you stack them properly, and more if you lay them flat and use every square inch of volume.
If you use the 8 shelf per book case configuration there would be room for one row of flat books on top of the shorter rows, and 2 in the larger. Also, an inch or two in the front for trinkets.
IkeaHackers has a few options, including using a plastic storage box as a tier to lift the back row of books up a bit to be seen over the front row.
But as I recall from our tours of our own book collections, the bookshelves themselves make the greatest difference.
RHG: Dear Mike’s wife: PLEASE MARRY THIS DUDE AGAIN because he is for the Keeper Shelf.
Dear Mike: I have uh…8…bookshelves (which do not include the Media Shelves) and One of them is a Super Basic shelves from Target that has the bulk of my mass market paperbacks (the ones that aren’t randomly strewn all over the house- I found one in my baking cabinet the other day). It’s crammed as full as I can get it, and everyone once in awhile I think I should organize it by any system beyond “the order in which they came out of the moving box” but then I do not.
My favorite shelf, though, is a brick and board one made from 7 foot long 1 x 12 boards and paving stones dug out of my parents’ yard. I can fit a STUNNING amount on there, it can take like, four rows of mass markets, and I can move it by myself if I need to. The other advantage of Ye Olde Bricke and Boarde is that you can make it to fit the space as needed. You have a wall that’s 6 feet, 3 inches, but you can make this sucker go 6 feet high? You can use all that space. All of it! It’s yours!
Amanda: When I first moved, I had an IKEA bookshelf, but be warned that after three moves, it collapsed. So if you’re settled into a place and don’t plan on packing up anytime soon, IKEA would be an okay bet!
I also love this thread on Book Riot. There are all sorts of different finishes and styles.
I recently bought these.
The sides are sturdy and I like that it comes in a two-pack. If height is an issue, the model also comes in a smaller size.
CarrieS: Oh honey, I’m no help here at all. You can see my stash in this post.
Since then I’ve added some more bookcases – and my heart is set on getting someone to make me floor to ceiling bookcases all around the family room.
I refuse to double stack books although I have been known to pile them on the floor. I often find with paperbacks that stacking them horizontally helps maximize space.
Confession – one time I thought how fun it would be to get a non-working fridge and fill it with cookbooks but then in a rare moment of sanity I realized that I don’t have anywhere to put another fridge, working or otherwise. I’m part of the problem, not the solution I’m afraid.
What about you? Do you have any advice for Mike, or suggestions on how best to manage a robust paperback collection?
I saw this on Pinterest once and thought yes! I do love to be surrounded by my books and see them all lined on my shelves, but when the paperback stacks are becoming like Jenga, something must be done. Pull out side shelves will give around 6-8 times the shelving space, depending on depth of runners.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/24/51/87/245187a407a094336c14ddb498059941.jpg
What a sweet email! I have the IKEA Kallax Bookcase Room Divider, which is four cubes high, four cubes wide, and it’s deep enough for a standing set and a flat set (or two standing sets) per cube.
And my apartment has a bookcase built into one of the closets, which was a lovely surprise.
@Neverwhere – omg, those pullout shelves are AMAZING
Get a compactus filing unit. Sometimes you can find them second hand on ebay/craigslist fairly reasonanly priced. Not very pretty, but awesome storage 🙂 or like the first comment from neverwhere, that looks excellent
@kateb I know, right? Neat, but still fully accessible. LOVE.
This is my current setup (http://emmwrites.tumblr.com/post/160185157866/shelfie-1-may-2017). The shelf on the left (the bottom pic) I stole from my parents and is great for my large textbooks but doesn’t hold a lot.
The right (top pic) is actually two shelves stacked upon one another and it is all double stacked. The lower I picked up secondhand for $5 and is one of the best things I’ve ever purchased. It is indestructible I tell you. The upper is a flimsy customwood thing that is being held up by the books in it.
I find I can fit more in if I stack vertically. I have around 350+ books.
We bought a giant wood bookcase that the poublic library was retiring. The shelves are adjustable, so I have a few that are taller, for my graphic novels, and a few that are short, for my mass markets. If you plan to stack two deep on the shelves, beware that the IKEA shelves will warp under weight after some time has passed.
My best advice would be to buy her a Kindle. Mr.MirandaB and I still have plenty of books from our early years and I tend to buy craft and non-fiction in hard copy form, but fiction these days, is all about the Kindle. If we didn’t have Kindles, we would have this same problem with needing tons of new shelves.
We also kept our books culled pretty hard. We have a good used bookstore near us that will take trade-ins. I also donated books to the cancer center that treated Mom. They kept shelves for patients and caregivers.
Never mind. I missed the part where she was buying digital. It’s early. Sorry!
I would recommend reading The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Donate the books you’ll never read again. Just keep the favorites. Start using the public library.
My husband & I are both readers, & we have about 20 bookshelves. Every room in the house has at least one bookcase (except for bathrooms). Some are IKEA, which have held up ok for 30 years. We also have nicer ones from Ethan Allen, which are beautiful but were expensive. We also buy digital books. We even have one we bought as bare wood from a finish it yourself store, after which my husband decided he did not like finishing furniture. If money is a concern, I would recommend IKEA or RedHeadedGirl’s bricks and board solution.
As a confirmed book hoarder and a former bookseller, I do want to give a few major words of warning on bookshelves. Limit the space between upright supports to about 3 feet/1 meter. If you insist on shelving two or more deep, use braced hardwood boards. (Nail or wood-glue lathe strips to support the shelves.) It might sound like overkill, but otherwise, even solid hardwood can bend under the weight of stacked mass-market paperbacks. At one point in my career, I worked for a used bookstore that had a bookcase that was 8 feet high and 6 feet wide (no center supports or bracing), shelved 3 books deep. I had to fill the back two rows of the bottom three shelves with his excess Danielle Steel duplicates to keep the case from collapsing under it’s own weight. (The owner never refused a paperback Danielle Steel, so fortunately he had a serious horde of them.)
A solution a librarian friend had for us was to put a solid plank of wood at the back of the shelf, as wide as the width of a book, and about 3 inches high. Then you can doublestack the books easily – you can still see what the books at the back are as their spines are now elevated the height of the wood.
I shall ignore the suggestion of *my* husband who has commented that “for every new book that comes in, two should leave*. Humph!
http://abeautifulmess.com/2016/02/diy-diamond-shaped-book-shelves.html
Diamond shelves? Yes! (They have other DIYs, as well!)
I have bookshelves from Home Depot and they’ve lasted a pretty long time. The best solution I’ve found, which might not fit everyone because the majority of mine are paperbacks, is to stack the books spine horizontal in about stacks of 8 (or however many rise up to meet the next shelf). This way I’ve gotten in about 4-5 stacks per length of the shelf and my shelves are deep enough that I can do two rows (sometimes even three if I’m trying to keep some together). This allows me to read the spines easier without having to tilt my head, and move books around to find others, by just pulling out a stack and shifting them. But also to be fair, I have my shelved by category and then (try) by author, so I know what’s on each shelf. And occasionally I’ll rotate which books are in the back row vs the front so I can reread ones I might not remember are there.
My dad and I* built a bookshelf 10+ years ago which is still standing strong with no bowing of shelves, with all shelves being double-shelved. It was designed to be able to fit hardcovers and large paperbacks, and will fit two rows of those with just a smidgeon (maybe 1cm) overhanging the front. It’s a relatively short bookshelf because of the space it was built to fit into.
*Dad did most of the building. I was the “hold this here” and “get me the hammer/saw/nails” person.
It is:
29cm deep (back to front)
108cm tall
104cm wide
The shelves have 24.5cm of internal height (i.e. not including the wood; that’s the actual space to put the books in).
The wood we used was 2cm thick and 29cm wide.
We put a 2cm x 4cm piece of wood front and back at the halfway point as bracing with half-lap joints**. At the sides of the shelves there are 2cm quarter-circle pieces of bracing under each shelf.
**That’s the only part of the shelf where you can’t double-shelve, but seeing it’s only 2cm wide it only means one less book per shelf and I do think it’s worth it as the shelves haven’t bowed at all.
And it has a plywood back.
It fits about 30-35 books across one shelf (so about 70 books per shelf double-stacked), depending how thick the books are.
If you have any questions or if I’ve missed any vital information/dimensions, please feel free to ask 🙂
Having typed up my response I realize it is way too long, and if anyone actually wants to talk building stuff, reach out to me and we can email or something, but otherwise fair warning, this is a long ass, boring comment.
All my stuff is in storage, so I don’t have photos, but I’ve built a lot of shelves, and I recommend modular if you move around.
So, my biggest unit is actually three. The bottom is two individual pieces, I forget exact dimensions (I wanted one to fit along a narrow wall in one apt, then made a matching one for a later apt with a defunct fireplace) but around 3′ high and 2 1/2′ wide, out of one by twelve. Good for hardcovers, the space on the bottom fits the biggest books, the nice thing with designing your own is you can figure out exactly how tall you need each shelf and go from there.
The third shelving unit is made out of one by eight, for paperback, but you can get away with one by six if you’re committed to mass market, and maybe use 1×8 for the bottom for trade paperbacks if you have more of those than hardcovers? It was originally designed to be its own unit, maybe 6′ tall and a little over 5′ wide (it had to fit between sockets iirc correctly). I then moved into a place with 10′ ceilings and threw it up on top of the two big guys and it looked great. You do need to put a brace on top if you’re a responsible human being and/or have children. If you use 1×6, it will not ever be stable on its own, but make it tall and you won’t be able to see a bracket on top, or just drill through the back of the bookcase into a few studs.
In short, you need to design around your space, for your specific book needs, but generally speaking, build tall. And quick, because I’m always drowning in books, and no one notices the joins when there are that many books. Seriously, only my brother ever noticed how slapdash my efforts were, and he was just jealous because he spent so long fussing about with antique planes he only ever finished one bookshelf in his life.
I don’t think I even wasted time rabbiting the shelves, although *maybe* for hardcover. Half the time I don’t even mitre outside corners, in which case of course you want the sides to go inbetween the top and bottom, and not be tacked alongside. Plywood backing, just cut it say half an inch smaller than each finished dimension so it doesn’t wind up sticking out anywhere when you wrestle it into square. I sometimes get fancy cutting out a bit in back to fit around a baseboard, but don’t usually bother.
What else? I think boards warp after something like 30″ if you don’t throw in some support. You can use finish nails for the whole thing, but if you’re more comfortable with a drill just get pretty brass screws and you won’t have to fill them. I used one of those mineral stains that harden, just because pine is cheap(est) and soft and I didn’t want to poly.
If you have a nice long wall and you own the space, you can shelf the whole thing and get hardware to have a sliding bookcase in front that’s half width…
All The Books was why I converted to ebooks as far as possible (well, that and losing my poor books to silverfish a couple of years ago) but a friend who quite possibly rivals Mike’s wife as far as book collecting goes swears by a combination of Billy and Kallax shelves.
Actually Neverwhere has hit on the optimal solution. Academic libraries strive to maintain huge collections of books and they use “compact shelving” similar to that photo. Eliminating aisles in book stacks mean you can store a tremendous amount.Google “compact shelving”,”mobile shelving”,”mobile aisle shelving”, “roller racking” or “roller shelving” to see examples.
So instead of stacking two layers of books on a conventional bookcase, you build very shallow shelves (4 1/2-5 in. deep). Put backs on the shelves to support their weight and keep books from falling off the shelves when moved. Place shelves just far enough apart to access the paperbacks so you can fit more shelves per unit. Put heavy duty wheels on them. You can put two layers of bookshelves against the wall in the space of one convention bookcase. If you have a rectangular space you can fill it entirely with bookcases on wheels and have access to ALL the books.
Adding to kkw’s comment, you can do variable height shelves if you drill both sides of the shelf (carefully, so they’re level) and use the little metal holders. I’ve found for floor to ceiling shelves three fixed height with backing, and four variables generally work. Put the hardcovers on the shelves with backing so they don’t bow. If you’re building to fit a space, it’s worth figuring out the exact lengths you need and then working out how many boards you can get from a sheet of 4×8 plywood. Most hardware stores will cut sheets to order, so when the boards arrive you just have to drill holes for shelf brackets, screw them together, and varnish. Double with rollers is beyond my carpentry skills I’m afraid, but it sounds cool.
I like to see my books as much as the next person, but it would be a disservice not to mention the myriad under the bed options from card board, to fabric, to actual drawers with wheels. I picked out the daybed for the guest room mostly for the two drawers built into the frame that a normal person would store clothes in.
You can also score used library shelving, both from this source
http://booksforlibraries.com/shelving/
and by searching “used library shelving” on google.
A word of caution on compact shelving (which comes in many varieties.) Floor loading can become an issue. Be aware of joists, etc in placing these.
I would recommend against under the bed storage – we had bedbugs and if we had had books under the bed that would have been awful. We have many Ikea bookshelves, the Billy line is inexpensive and holds up well (even for moves, and the less deep version allows stacking two paperbacks deep. My parents have two entire walls of these bookshelves. They need shimming and attachment to the walls if the floors are uneven.
Love my ebook collection in part due to space saving, but it’s not good for my eyes or sleep patterns to rely on e-only. Deciding which books to buy in print vs e is tough though. Favorites and comfort reads are an easy print buy. After that, it’s stuff I would be more likely to read just before sleeping…because print before sleep is the best. The problem then is how do you figure out what that is because I want all the books all the time.
I have a bookcase that is not against a wall – so I can double stack and access from both sides.
Growing up I had a bookshelf thingy in my bedroom (no idea from where) that was SUPER DEEP and I think this is a good thing. I could fit 3 rows of paperbacks on it all sitting on the shelf: one against the back, one in the middle, and one on the front with the spines almost touching the front edge of the shelf. The footprint is slightly deeper than a standard bookshelf but the height and the width are the same.
Sorry I don’t know where it came from, but if you are DIYing one I would make the shelves a lot deeper than normal.
It is said that the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem . . . I was forced to conclude that the reason why I had moved house twice in a short period of time was because I had run out of space for my books! I had to rationalise – sent books off to charity shops to be discovered by new owners, started using the library and read more books on my Kindle. 🙂
Shelves up near the ceiling! I live in a very tiny house with quite a few books and if I put them all on the floor I couldn’t have any other furniture. But if your ceilings are high enough, you can put a row (or two, or three) of shelves up there (Ikea has a kind of “floating shelf” you can hang on the wall; you may need to reinforce it if your books are heavy).
This is especially good for books you don’t reread all that often, but that you want on hand for when you need them. You can see where everything is, and if you also get yourself a stepladder you can get at them easily, but you’re not tripping over them.
Only caveat is to be careful of hanging shelves over seats or beds if you live in an earthquake adjacent locale.
Good luck!
Swimming against the tide, I would suggest very shallow bookshelves, just deep enough for one paperback. Shallow bookshelves work well in hallways, those 4 to 5 inches usually aren’t missed. Remove baseboard to place shelf directly against wall or perhaps omit a backing altogether to reduce overall depth. Shallow bookshelves may also work on a wall behind a table or easy chair.
Running a shelf along the circumference of a room, 12 inches or so from the ceiling, is another great way to keep books visible and out of the way. If you make an attractive wood bracket to support the wood shelf they look very nice and can be painted to “disappear” into the wall or left natural.
I had a similar problem and went to the digital realm as a result. Does she do kindle’s pay by the month read all you want program? That may help the digital library space issue.
What about the craft storage closets that fold out two or three times from an armoire? I’ve seen ones where people can put entire sewing room supplies or even kitchens in one fold-out unit. If you can make a bookshelf, I bet you could diy one together, just make sure to reiniforce it and perhaps consider a strong anchor to a wall. With the right math, you could make an entire wall shelf unit that looks like one setup only to fold out each one into several bookshelves. Just thinking of the idea makes my heart flutter!
If she does Goodreads, maybe she could go through and find all her DNF books or ones she gave one or two stars to for donation? Start small and free up a tiny bit of space in the meantime? I have the same issue with cookbooks and cooking magazines- never want to give them up, but really, I’m never going to use them.
Two suggestions.
1. I use Ivar shelves from Ikea, which allows me to regulate the distance between shelves much more specifically than, say, Billy shelves. I also stack some books vertically, as well as horizontally.
2. Think of your collection as a garden, not a museum. Like a garden, it requires continual care and attention, including pruning of some parts and disposal of items that die. (fFace it, books, like people, have a lifespan, and there’s no room in my collection for dead books.) I don’t double or triple shelve; that’s the high road to double or triple buying. Also like a garden, my book collection changes, as I do. I look at every title I own at least once a year, and ruthlessly cull items that I decide I will not read again,. That’s the only way I can make room on the shelves for new “keepers”, I.e. Those I will read again.
I keep my collection to help myself keep growing; anything useless for that purpose has to go, no matter how much I may have loved it years ago. This, plus eBooks, has helped me keep the number of items manageable.
This is a subject very dear to my heart. In fact I’m in the middle of a blog post about it, because the arrival of bookshelves in my house after 10 YEARS of waiting (in plastic-boxes-in-the-basement Azkaban!) was a big flipping deal.
First of all, why didn’t anyone tell me about that library shelving place?! Thanks, romsfuulynn, that would probably have solved the problem sooner. So failing that, and on a tight budget, I would recommend scouring flea markets and garage sales. Newer cheaper shelving can be very flimsy, as others have said. My shelves came from a store that closed down. They don’t match each other exactly, but everything matches if you paint it white, and the shelves are thick and sturdy. I do love them everso, and that’s why I’m being so selective about what goes on them, because of course they’re not big enough for the whole collection.
Others have had great tips and recommendations for the shelving, so I’ll abstain. I wanted to speak up to recommend that Mike not only take his wife’s book makeup (mass market vs hardback, etc.) into consideration, but ALSO her preferences for organizing them. I’m very particular about how I group/stack/order my books, and nothing annoys me more than shelves that are not appropriately sized for it. I’ve downsized as I go more digital, and some of my genres have started to mix on shelves–the horror!
(“Downsized” = 3 cheapo bookcases that are mostly double-stacked from 4 bookcases where most were triple-stacked.
Oh! If most of her books are a consistent size (e.g., all mass market) I would also recommend laying books flat horizontally rather than upright vertically. I learned this running a used bookstore. You can fit more books on a shelf (particularly if you’ve got a stray hardback that needs to fit, too, and so size the shelves a little taller than a paperback), it also keeps the dust off of the pages, and you don’t have to worry about them falling over if you’re leaving a little space for all those upcoming purchases. 🙂
Dear Mike, what a loving husband you are.
If all of your wife’s books are the same height, you could build shelves to accommodate only those size books. That way there would be no wasted space.
I have also discovered that I could get more books on a shelf if I pile them on top of each other. It may be a nuisance to get the one I want, but it does save space.
Another idea would be to put one bookcase in front of another. You would have to put the front bookcase on wheels so it could be easily moved. I wouldn’t recommend this if you live in an area prone to earthquakes.
A drastic option, of course, would be for your wife to cull her books.
I am certain we all would love to know which solution works for you.
HEAs do happen in real life! I knew it!
Anyway – Ikea Hackers have a number of ways that you can make Billy bookcases look less Ikea-y.
Also, if you are handy, you may try these floating shelves (I can’t do them to my walls, but I love the idea)
I built a 3 bedroom house with rumpus room to hold MY collection, but I guess many people might think that is excessive for a single person….
My tip for bowing Billy shelves is to turn the shelves upside down and balance them on the shelf supports. You can see the little cutout pieces on the shelving that is built that way, but most people who are looking at your shelves concentrate on the books, not the shelving. I did this with my Billy shelves about 18 months ago and now they are straight again. These shelves hold a lot of hardcovers and I have rotated some of the shelves more than once and they seem to have stood up well to the changes.
Neverwhere – I just gasped in awe! Hope my family is prepared for our next project
I know how very hard it can be to let go of books … I’ve been working on that for nearly ten years. Used to have books in the kitchen cabinets, the pantry, the linen closet, six big bookcases, two freestanding cabinets, a folding shelf, and bracket shelves over the doorways. Oh, the books.
I have reduced my library to less than half what it was. It gets easier with practice. The Kindle helped A LOT because I could start by giving away books I knew I could get again if I seriously wanted to.
I suggest a shelf all around the top of the wall of a chosen room, for starters. A single shelf, well-supported, just above the window and door trim. There is typically nothing else up there and you can stack books all the way to the ceiling to minimize dust. Also, if you use a high shelf like this for paperbacks, a book that falls off isn’t going to give you a concussion or a broken toe.
A 10×12 room will provide 44 linear feet of shelving; it takes up no floor space, and provides a single layer of books so you can still see what you have, and gloat over it. 🙂
i bought shelving units meant for digital media (dvd’s, video games). they aren’t as deep as a regular bookshelf (just right for mass market or even trade size books w/o having to double up, which I hate doing, or having wasted space in front/behind the books), plus the shelves are meant to be closer together. on one unit size I can I have the shelves so that several fit mass mkt books across w/ room for another to sit horizontally on top of them and several shelves where I have 2 columns of 3-4 books stacked horizontally. the other type of units aren’t quite as wide across but the “short shelves” work well for trade size books stacked horizontally w/ some space for small swag items. then of course more books get stacked on top of the units 🙂 I like them as they don’t infringe out into the room as much as regular bookshelf plus I can view all the book titles with ease and without having to move books out of the way of others