When I was young mother, I realized one day that I had so many books and my shelves were full! Then I realized that only a few of them would I ever read again. Some I had to keep, naturally. I found offering them to friends, selling them at garage sales, offering them to the local library, freed me with storing all the unwanted books. I found it hard to part with a lot of them, but felt so much better when I had given them to friends who like to read. If you still want to store your books, how about bins in your closet...either on the sides, on the floor or the shelf over your clothes. You may be able to get low rolling bins that fit under your bed that would hold books also.

I feel your pain. You really don't have many options when you have lots of books. You can go for the "decorated" look or just make do with what you have. My books are stored by category and it works well for me. I do have storage for books in other rooms of my house. Can you squeeze in some inexpensive folding shelves in your bedroom?

I bought two of these from the container store and stacked them for my son...

Not glamorous, but serves the purpose

Styled by color. Looks cool, but not very practical.

These also appear to be styled by color, but still gives an example of cases with more books than decorative items.

These are two of mine.

The best thing you can do for your books is to pare them down as much as you can. Printed media is quickly becoming obsolete and they can really clutter up your house. Once you have read them, it is unlikely that you will ever read them again.

Take them down to what really has importance in your life and be real about it. Then, look for how best to shelf them. You may find a higher appreciation for those that remain after you have removed those of less importance.

Are they organized by size, subject, or alphabetically now? Are any worth over (say) $50 on the used book market and require special care?

Book lovers ( & I’m a book lover ) won’t like this, but I agree with wed am, pare them down & donate the rest , if you can bring yourself to do that. That’s what I did.

Another book lover, but they get smelly and attract silverfish. Purge.

I, too, am a book lover and have a collection of cook books. I have two book shelves in my hall way, and I don't "decorate" the bookshelves. I don't color coordinate, they are just on the shelves by size (bigger ones at the bottom and smaller as they go to the top shelf) and then by category (I have all of the cookbooks together). To me that is not an area that needs to be "decorated", I like the look of all of the different jackets together. Some people put all of the books in backwards so that all you see are the pages (and not the spines) to get them to look the same, so you could try that. Or you could recover the books to all be the same color, I've seen people do that with white sticky paper or wall paper or brown wrapping paper made to look old school with the brown paper bags of yesteryear.

While I agree with paring down books, I disagree about the chances of never again reading a book that’s already been read once. I have books that I read and reread regularly and am sharing some with the grandchildren. There’s something special about reading a book to your grandchild that’s was once read to you as a child. The pages may be a bit careworn and the book jacket a bit wrinkly here and there but the words resonate as much as ever.

i don’t just reread children’s books, of course, but also plenty of others as well. Some hold interest for a year or two while others I still cherish. They fill my shelves.

I present these thoughts as an idea in lieu of more and more and more bookshelves:

Years ago I would've said my perfect house would've included built-in bookshelves in every room ... especially a dining room that functioned as a library and a dining space ... and an entry way that would've incorporated bookshelves in the same way. From childhood I had books overflowing my meager shelves, and I always had stacks of books by the bed. I grew up in an old farmhouse that had a wide central hall lined with bookshelves on both sides, and in the middle of the hot-hot summer days (no air conditioning), we five kids'd lie on the floor in the hallway reading quietly.

However, once Kindle came into my life, I changed my habits. I realized that I love READING, NOT BOOKS. I love that I can carry literally thousands of books anywhere I go ... yesterday I was reading my Kindle while giving blood, which isn't something that would've been easy to do with a paper book.

As a result, I've given away many, many, many books ... and I don't miss them. I've kept special books, of course. And I've kept reference books. I've even pared down my cookbooks.

I currently have one large bookshelf in my office and another smaller one in my living room ... books are double-shelved on both. My new house will have one huge-huge built-in bookshelf in the bedroom, and I think it'll actually be ENOUGH.

Why not build bookcases to the ceiling add a library ladder and make them a focal point. I love books too . A friend did exactly that in her small house and I love it

Here are a couple . I also like the Sapien book shelves from DWR for the books I access all the time they can go anywhere since they are free standing. I use 2 of them in my office for design books and magazines

I have a lot of books, always have, and have never had any type of bugs in them, and the books have never had any type of odor.

Silverfish like humidity of 75-95% and are nocturnal so are most likely to be found in your bathroom at night, but they like polysaccharides, so they might eat the glue in the book bindings of very old books. But is your place that dark and moist that they find it hospitable?

I love going to the library for many reasons, and one of which is the musty smell of the old books which I do think is a bit of mold or fungal or something like that.

None of the books at home have that odor and some are very old.

As for saving books, well, there is a subset of hoarding called book-hoarding.

It's something to think about.

The reality is that used books have very little value and are in excess in our modern world. They don't last forever, either. And, they are very heavy and awkward to move around and store.

Another reality is that the number of them that you are going to read again is very limited.

A third reality is that your family will probably get rid of them all after you die. The actual number of books that have any lasting value, of any manner, are really very limited in number. Sure, there are some that have lasting personal value to any one person. But, not very many in scope of the vast number of books that some people have collected in their homes.

When my daughter and her husband purchased their house, the entire house was covered in book shelves that were chock full of books. There were tons and tons of books. The reason that they were left in the house is because there is very little value to them and no one wanted them. It really amounted to a small library.

A review of what was there yielded quite a wide variety of books, from cheap novels, to vintage and antique books. Some had been kept since the older couple were young and were inscribed. Both the original owner of the house and the subsequent older couple who then owned it were all teachers and all from the local area. So, they had accumulated a lot of books between them, over the decades.

There was little thought gone in to assessing the book as to it's value, to anyone. It seemed to have built from the idea that all books are worthy. So, it it was a book, it went on the shelf.

What a job it was to get rid of the excess! Granted, there were any number of curiosities to be sampled in this collection. Daughter even contacted a local book dealer, and the only deal they could offer was to trade the books for other books. She did not want different books. She wanted to get rid of what she had. They filled the house, literally.

She invited anyone she knows to come in and take whatever they wanted.

Some do still remain. But, there is really no value to them. They really were a diverse collection, of everything. Some of them seem to be so unique and interesting that is hard to fathom that they have little, or no, value.

Bottom line is that the only real value to them is whatever the owner attaches to them or what you might be able to convince someone to pay you.

I have a couple of books from my childhood and can still just look at the cover and remember how excited that book made me feel. We had very, very few books as children. It was not like today when books are all over the place and we are dealing with excess. There were no real bookstores in most towns back in those days. If you were lucky, your school had a library, or there was a local library or a mobile library. The last couple of decades of the last century brought about large retail level buying venues for books and people came in and bought all kinds of books.

I spent seven years selling those books to people at the local bookstore. I saw all manner of things go in to print between the covers of books. A lot of it was not worth printing, in my estimation. The retail trade gave rise to a lot of "pop" books from fiction to self help. Just about anything that was believed to have some selling value was printed, worthy or not. I saw the shelves that held the art, the science and the literature dwindle and be taken over by these hot seller popular genres.

The same with children's books. Most were simply promotions for licensed characters such as Dora and the Disney princesses, or American Girl dolls. The older independent readers were largely promotions for TV and movies. There were even fiction books that were rewritten as per the movie version of the original book!

Then, there were all of the contemporary social and political non fiction books that popped up from every pundit who had a thought about anything. Most had no relevance beyound the one political or social moment in time and were quickly replace by the next political "tell all" by the time the next truck load of books pulled up to the loading dock.

That is the reason that there are now excessive amounts of printed matter floating out there with no real value. People collected all manner of things, from books to toys. Most of it has no real value today because there were millions of copies of it produced. Husband has a wall of books. I keep telling him to get rid of them now because the kids are just going to haul them away when we die.

The only real value is what your books have to you. If that is your value, by all means, build those shelves.

That is what the poster is saying they consider the books of value to them. I have a Kindle and it in no way replaces a book in my hand but I do use it when travelling and its great. Just like I can use a CAD pkg. for design but prefer to sit at my drafting table with a fresh piece of paper and a nice sharp pencil for my design work. There are some things that just have value beyond money.

I would check IKEA's Billy bookcases too. They can give the look of a built-in without the high price tag.

billy bookcase built in - Google Search · More Info

Billy Bookcase with Library Ladder

Billy Bookcase Hack with Library Ladder - The Lilypad Cottage · More Info

I posted above about keeping my favorite books. But ebooks, which used to sadden be compared to “ real” books have become a necessity for my aging eyes, beyond even the miracles of surgery to fix, and I can’t read all font sizes of words...a fair amount still but also a significant amount with words that are too small to decipher. . I can adjust the font on a Kindle. That’s a game changer...and the reason my books with small font are now going to new homes.

By all means, that person should invest in some shelves.

I have a friend who has been a collector for his whole life. He loved to seek out and find a book that he wanted. It gave him great pleasure to do so.

Now, life has turned a bad turn for him and he is looking at only a short foreseeable future. He has told me how the books that he once placed such value in now sit in his nice shelves and don't bring him the joy that he had expected, or the thrill that they once did. They serve to remind him of the fact that he has no future to have a relationship with them and that he spent his life energies in collecting them.

It is a little like a child that he showered with love and attention that does not now return in kind. He has no children, only books and cats that he shares with his wife.

The reality (again, the reality) is that the books are his and his wife does not share his ownership of them. She has a mission in life that she is totally dedicated to, but it does not include his books. He has told my husband ( his longest childhood friend) that they are his when he dies. Not so. Sorry, but they are not coming to my house.

He is a collector, not a hoarder of books. The above poster is right that there is a difference.

My husband has the idea that the books on his shelf reflect who he is. Yes, they do reflect his interest in science and the human experience, human origins, etc. The reality (oh, the reality!) is that they do not translate into "Dad" after he is gone. They will remember Dad, but not through the books he has on his shelves. Those, they will put in cardboard boxes and haul off to the local library resell.

Still, the knowledge that is printed between the covers of those books is so extensive. It does not seem right that such a gathering of knowledge should be so easily disposed of and dismissed. The value in that knowledge, the art in that literature, the expression of the values of a culture is such a treasure! That is how knowledge and enlightenment is passed---through the printed words. I understand that. But, much like the human body, books also get old and turn to dust. And, due to the prolific and cheap printing industry many, many, people have many,many books, unlike in ages past when they were much more rare. The printing press has been replaced by electronic media.

Have you ever tried to go through a stack of old National Geographic magazines and throw them away? They make you want to save every one of them because they are so beautiful and they contain such knowledge about our world and people. But, how are you going to keep all of them? It is almost obscene too see them there in the recycling bin. But, I can't be the keeper of it all! There is just too much!

Yes, the original poster seems to place great value in their books. The personal value can be quite real, no matter any other reality. So, they should enjoy and value and keep what ever they deem important to them.

I stand by my assertion that there is more enjoyment and pleasure to be had when it is directed toward fewer possessions. You will enjoy and treasure more when you have less.

Oh dear God, the Nat Geos! My father passed away last month. He was a good hobby carpenter and built long freestanding bookshelves for their hallway, mostly to hold his Nat Geos, going back to at least the 1980s. I noticed the unwrapped ones and realized he has a paid up subscription and they are still coming. My mother needs room, both to move and to breathe. I will attempt to donate the whole lot the next time I'm in town.

I love books and reading. We lost book storage in a remodel and it forced us to evaluate which books we keep. We need to cut again since the remaining ones do not yet fit in the library space available. I very thankful for the library donation box and a charity book drop box near our house. It is time to share. Plus, it makes me feel like Benjamin Franklin to give/share books.

Those magazines are among some of the most beautiful! But, there are so many copies of them that they have no monetary value and who is ever going to actually read them? Not ever your father read them all, apparently.

I once knew an old woman who had collected them since many decades ago. This was back some time ago, so her collection went really back. I will bet that they got trashed when she died. She had no children and no family around.

One thing that I did with some of them was to take the address off and leave them in waiting rooms that I might happen to visit and anytime that I had a flight, I would take a couple of them and leave them on the plane, tucked down in the pouch.

But, you have so darned many of them!

Houston's Nat Geo wall

Ara A , do you have room for a horizontal bookcase bench under a window? I've seen the IKEA shelves used like this.

Beechwood Modern Home · More Info

While it is always a good idea to cull through,some of us will always have many books left. I do (no apologies) and have found that custom,shallow (anywhere from 6.5 -8 inches) bookshelves suit about 90% of what I have. Mostly HC,some trade paper,about 6 linear feet of mass market sized stuff. I have other deeper shelves for the remainder. The first shallow shelves I had made are still with me,still useful. When I had them done,I was still perfecting my "system" but remember planning the distance between the shelves which are stationary. My point is that many times "big bookshelves" squander space. That's why I've seen folks who double up their rows of books within a shelf. Now,for me,that's a no-go,never happen situation.....as unthinkable as no books at all.

I get why people want to keep the books they read. It’s a hobby and a collection. But at some point, keep the best and dump the rest. Not every book was great. Create your bookcase including the best ones ....the ones you love and don’t give the lesser works the same awesome placement.

Then there’s that attachment to the quantity....

Before you donate them, create your own virtual library - take a picture of the cover of every book you own and create a digital album/library. There for all time and for your enjoyment to watch it grow. Then you can create a collage of the digital covers....a mosaic and turn it into your own photo art to hang. There they are in a huge picture on your bedroom wall. Keep the ones you love...but don’t let the quantity overwhelm.

Try rolling bins under the beds for paperbacks and limit the bookcases to actual hard back books.

If you should decide to donate your books please do not forget a nearby prison or correctional facility. Books are in huge demand and are always needed.

I donate mine to senior centers & convalescent hospitals. And I always take a stack of my magazines with me when I have a doctor or dentist appointment.

When sending your books out to new homes it might be advised to keep in mind the "audience" that you are sending them off to. Some books might be unsuitable or uninteresting to people in some situations.

Books are as varied in content as are human beings.

This is true of just about anything that we send on it's way to others as per our donations. If the donation does not suit the recipient, there is no point in it, except to make the donor feel better about passing it on.

Organizations that take donations must get a lot of stuff dumped on them. The SA and the GW both keep large dumpsters at hand and toss a lot of stuff.

I was looking through a coffee table book about California in the 60s at the local library. It was a large picture book with glossy pages and very cool images from that time. I'm pretty sure it was from a private donation. It smelled kind of moldy when I opened it and about 10 minutes later I was experiencing a major asthma attack. So I imagine having a large collection of these old books in your home would not be a good thing.

They also suck the moisture out of the air. This might not be much of a problem in your smaller home collection, but it is in a large bookstore. I expect it would also be in a library.

People who spend a lot of time in a bookstore get very dry sinuses.

We used to have a lot of books that we carried around with us when we moved. Seeing as how it was always I that was doing all the packing and keeping of books, I started to get rid of them many years ago.

I moved the whole mess out of the basement family room and into an upstairs room that hubby took over after the kids moved out. Storing books in a basement area is not a good idea.

They smelled. They absorbed moisture.

That is what that old book smell is. And, the new book smell if of the printing inks. Neither of these is as benign as some make it sound.

Books made from dead trees do not last forever.

Joni at Cote always has inspiring blog posts and this one on book storage reminded me of your post....Enjoy!!!

https://cotedetexas.blogspot.com/2018/08/where-to-put-extra-books.html?showComment=1534164034658#c7366799055970661811

another vote for the rolling bins under the bed for paperbacks. paperbacks always look scruffy on the shelves, anyway. i used to have an amazing TBR stash under the bed that my husband never found out about (well, i dont think he did...)

we are in our early 60s, just had our second floor repainted (3 bedrooms, one used as den, one as my office) and we had to pack everything in boxes in preparation for the painters. its an old house and we had a notion of getting all of the plaster over lath walls and ceilings repaired. oh my, when we moved in 9 years ago we had the movers pack and unpack a lot of things, this was all on us and i gotta say WE HAVE TOO MANY BOOKS. i have a stack by the back door and take a couple to donate every time i walk to the library. we have to whittle and winnow or we'll never be able to repaint in 10 more years.

If the criteria for keeping a book on the shelf is based on whether, or not, the book is a hard back, one must ask by what measure is the worthiness of the book judged? Is the book being judged only by it's cover?

And, if books must be stored under the bed and out of sight, perhaps they are not worthy of storing. The likelihood of any of those books having future value is really pretty slim.

Storing boxes of things like that is very close to hoarding. It is a far cry from keeping a book out in the spaces of your life because it has a significance and adds value to your life.

The term "pulp fiction" did not come out of nowhere. Most of those PBs are printed on cheap acidic paper and will just yellow and turn to dust. They are not meant to be kept. They are cheap, disposable thrills in genres such as mystery and science fiction, mostly.

The "QP's", quality paperbacks, are printed on better materials and are a cut above the PB's.

Still, if all you are doing is storing them.............under the bed, or in a box in the closet,no less............... why?

I am one of those awful people who double up their books.

So what?

I know where things are.

I am also one of those people who think science fiction is a good read, a great read.

Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov were geniuses.

You keep a book because you love it and you want to refer to it or read it again and again, and maybe it is easier to carry around a light paperback, et excusez-moi monsieur soup du jour, we all don't pay oodles of money for hard backs or want our books to take up that much space or weigh that much.

What is a "cut above" is what goes into our minds, it's really not important the quality of paper. Books are meant to be read and enjoyed, not to be collectibles prized based on the quality of their paper and bindings.

The difference between a PB and a QP is the quality of the paper that it is printed on. A PB is printed on lower quality pulp paper that has a high acid content. A QP is printed on better quality paper and is usually a larger format. A QP is much the same as a soft covered "hardback" book.

The genres of science fiction,mystery, and romance have, traditionally, been printed on pulp paper. They were marketed in the less expensive venues of spinners in retail stores and drug stores and were purchased as cheap reads with people buying the next one in the series as it came out in quick order, thus earning a reputation as being formula fiction.

That does not mean that there are not some outstanding authors being published. Some mystery authors seem to have a following, and science fiction has a large audience. Judging from who it was that stood, transfixed, in the aisle of the SF, it seems to be largely males. Not always, of course. The larger "art" books in that genre were always graced with front covers of scantily clad, large breasted females. Romance novels attracted the women, obviously. And, then there was the "anime" that had young teens, largely female, entranced and sitting on the floor with books in hand. All of this "genre fiction" was kept in proximity to each other because of the format of most of it.

The PBs in the book store were so numerous and sold in such mass quantities that they had to be back stacked on the shelves. That meant running a row of spine out books on the outer edge and the excess was in layered stacks behind that row. People came in and purchased them by the dozens.

That is not the same situation with those other works of fiction that are classified under the genre of "literature". Most of those were QP and CL (cloth) format and they are not in series.

By, and because of, these convoluted factors these books came to be cheap reads that are printed on cheap paper and meant to be consumed in mass quantities.

I spent years working in a book store and observing what went on the shelf and who bought it.

Just because it is pulp fiction does not mean that there are no outstanding authors. It does not mean that you cannot store them under the bed, on the stairs, in stacks on the floor of the basement, in large containers or boxes, or where ever you wish.

If that is your thing.

Be aware that they have no value beyond your own reading pleasure. They are, quite literally, almost a dollar a dozen at most book sales.

A dollar a dozen, goody.

I'm off to the second hand book shop!

Try the local library sales. My local county library has so many donated books that they can hardly give them away. A recent article said that the excess books end up at the used book stores. Although, if the library could not unload them, it is unclear how they could be of value to a used book store.

Used books in good condition still have value - that's why a relative of mine still is in the used bookstore business. However, people who want to sell a library, for instance, after a relative has passed will in most cases be offered much much less than they thing their books are worth. Of course there are many exceptions. In her bookstore she has a section of cheaper paperbacks for sale but the majority of books go for 5 and up, some way up. The used book dealers are not getting rich, they are in it for the love of it.

Before sending on books, including MM paperbacks, check their value. Sometimes an old MM can surprise you. https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=22483516488&searchurl=tn%3Dkindred%26sortby%3D17%26an%3Doctavia%2Bbutler%26fe%3Don&cm_sp=snippet--srp1--title4 Of course, actually selling the book is a different kind of project than storing 'em.

When my daughter bought her house, it was filled with books and bookshelves. She had a hard time getting rid of them. The used bookstore only wanted to trade her book for book. These were books of all kinds, from at least a 60 years, or more, span of time.

There were not really any mass markets to speak of. Most were hardbacks.

All of the previous owners had been school teachers.