Spring is coming soon, and it’s time to finish that spring cleaning! We vacuum under beds and furniture, dust every surface, and clean every inch of our home. Or we would, but our books are so much more appealing.
However, even us bookish people need to remember our spring cleaning tasks: cleaning and organizing bookshelves. Yes, it’s tedious, but if we want to protect our books, and make room for new ones, it’s vital that we take care of our shelves. We can help; read on for a quick guide.
Empty the Shelves and Clean
Let’s face it: even our bookshelves, filled with our beloved books, get dirty. It could be dust, bits of paper, forgotten bookmarks, or pretty much anything that gets caught in our books. They need a fresh cleaning, and there’s no better time than the beginning of spring!
Removing all books and knickknacks to clean your shelves is a great start to get rid of any dust or dirt. Plus, doesn’t it feel better to be able to put your books somewhere nice and clean where they can be protected?
Decide Which Books Go Back on the Shelves
We don’t always want the same books on our shelves all the time. That doesn’t mean we don’t like them anymore! All it means is that we want to make room for newer books, or perhaps old favorites we suddenly want to read again.
It can be hard to decide which ones to put back on the shelves. What if you love all of your books equally? What if you’re indecisive? Our advice: go with your gut. If you think you won’t read a certain book for a while, maybe that one shouldn’t go back on your shelves.
Pack Up Books
What do you do with books that won’t fit on your shelves anymore? You could pass them on to someone else, sell them, or donate them, but that’s all stressful and heartbreaking. Packing them away to be read later — or potentially never — is the easier solution.
If you have space, try storing them in boxes or bins somewhere nearby, or perhaps in a storage unit. Or you could get creative and try finding another way to store them, like having large book stacks in a corner, or maybe invest in furniture like floating shelves to store them better.
Organize Books and Knickknacks
Everyone likes to organize their books differently. You could do it by size, color, genre, author name, alphabetically, and so on. You could also stack them on top of each other, pack them next to each other, or a combination of the two. Basically, there’s no wrong way to organize.
Adding small trinkets, while certainly not a requirement, makes bookshelves pop more. Moving them around the books and the shelves adds a little more personality, and they’re just pleasant to look at. These could be book-related items like character figurines, pretty bookends, bookmarks, or whatever you want.
Enjoy Your New Shelves!
Now that all the hard work is done, it’s time to step back and appreciate what you’ve worked so hard on! While books are the most important to us bookish people, our bookshelves and their aesthetics are up there, too.
This is also the time to make any minor changes as you see fit. Maybe a book needs to go on a different shelf, or a bookmark is sticking too far out of a book, or anything that you don’t want to see on your shelves.
Cleaning our bookshelves may be a pain, but it’s worth it to see the final results. It’s our chance to give our shelves a new look for the year — or, for some of us, a new look for the month. Happy cleaning!
Click here for an article on 10 compelling books releasing this spring.
Check out our Bookstr Team Recs shelf on Bookstr’s Bookshop page.
