Preparing to Rearrange Your Books or to Start a New Library

Rearranging your shelves can be a lot of work but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It’s a good idea to prepare for the task and know exactly what you are getting yourself into. The results are definitely worth it, but, like anything else, you want to make sure that you are ready so that once you start the project you can see it through with minimal stress.

Once you’ve decided to rearrange your books, here’s where to start:

Mentally prepare: Set aside a few days or weeks for this project. You don’t want to feel too stressed or physically taxed from the experience.

Physically prepare: Make sure you have all the materials you need on hand (see below for a list) so that you can sort and reach things with ease.

Ask for help: Hire a professional, or ask a friend to have a glass of wine with you, while you work through the shelves. The process is much easier with another set of hands and it helps to have someone with whom to discuss what looks good and your connections to various books.

Adjust shelf heights: Adjusting the shelf height is much easier to do when the shelves are empty. Cull some of your books so that you’re working with less weight on the shelves.

Thoughtfully discard: Sell books or give away those that no longer belong in your collection. See our tips for donating or trading in your books.

Catalog your books: A basic spreadsheet program is really all you need to make a list of your books, however there are programs and apps that will help you take the cataloging to a new level.

Book Sorting and Styling Supplies

Swiffers and Dusting Cloths

Bookshelves can get dusty over time, especially behind the books. While working on your bookshelves, it’s a great time to take everything off the shelves and clean off the dust, clearing out the old energy and making space for the new.

Box Cutter

When Juniper Books ships books to a client’s home, there are a lot of boxes to open and a lot of shrink-wrap on new books to remove. It’s also helpful for breaking down packing materials and disposing of cardboard properly after you are all done. Always be careful with sharp blades.

Archival Book tape

Scotch Book Tape is great for making minor repairs to book jackets and torn pages, however it is not acid-free. If you have rare books to repair, we’d recommend going to a library supply site such as The Library Store and searching for archival book tape.

Tape Measure

Sometimes you can get a gut feeling for how much room you have and how much space books take up, but other times you need to get more mathematical about it. When Juniper Books starts a project, the first thing we ask for are measurements of the shelves. We want to make sure we supply the perfect quantity of books. Thatcher prefers a ratio of 2/3 books to 1/3 accessories on his shelves, however we work on plenty of projects ranging from a minimalist 25 percent fill rate up to 100 percent full. Having a tape measure on hand helps you set the shelf heights at the right level and helps you measure your books and your shelves to fit together.

White Eraser

The Staedtler white eraser has many, many uses. Thatcher always has one on hand for cleaning up books in a variety of ways. You can use it to erase pencil marks in the books (e.g., used book dealers’ pencil pricing notes). You can use it to clean up ink or other smudges on the outside of the page edges. You can also use it to rub away adhesive from price stickers on the jackets or just freshen up the spines of the books.

Stepladder and Ladder

Depending on the height of your tallest shelves, it’s great to have a stepladder or a taller ladder. You want to have the flexibility to clean off all the dust on that top shelf and put your books exactly where you want them. You don’t want to have to jump up to reach the shelf or put yourself in a precarious position, so round up the ladders and keep yourself safe and comfortable when working on your shelves.

Travel Dolly

We are not going to lie to you. A lifetime of moving books is not so kind to the body, especially the back. Lifting forty-pound boxes can take a toll, so preparing ahead to avoid heavy lifting will free you up to give more energy to individual books and where they should go. Having a dolly to roll boxes of books around the house (and even to take with you when you go to donate books) can prevent a lot of pain later!

Scissors

Having scissors nearby is helpful for trimming errant threads from book covers or tidying jackets, corners, and other loose ends.

Sticky Notes

Consider using sticky notes to map out your library. You can attach them to shelves with your ideas about where specific subjects go (history, biographies, classic literature, etc.). You can note your thoughts on how each shelf should be organized or where a picture frame or object might go. Step back and look at the notes before you place any books. You might save yourself some time later by making adjustments before you get to moving the actual books.

A Laptop or Tablet

There are different ways to make a list or catalog of the books you have so that you can reference it later—both to figure out what you have and maybe where you have it. You will also have it for insurance purposes in case you ever need to prove what was in your library. You could go the old-fashioned route and write up each book on an index card, then acquire an antique library card catalog to store them in (or just place them in a drawer). Or you can enter each book into a spreadsheet—author, title, publisher, notes about where you acquired the book, etc. There are also a number of websites, apps, and desktop programs that allow you to enter an ISBN number manually or via a barcode scanner; the programs will retrieve all the details about a given book. A few of these tools that we have used include LibraryThing, Collectorz, and Libib. Keep in mind that it can be fun to delegate the task of library management to the younger generation to manage! Have them research the apps and enter the books.

Needle Nose Pliers and a Rubber Mallet

The reality of adjustable bookshelves is that they can be a lot of work to reposition. We love them, but pulling out and pushing in those pegs in the little holes can cause a lot of carpal tunnel syndrome. Having a few tools handy will make the process much more efficient and allow you to line up the shelves the way you want them. The pliers help you take pegs out of the wall and the rubber mallet helps you tap them back in. Thatcher is a big fan of having all the shelves at the same level around the room, but it often requires a tape measure and some trial and error to get the positions just right. You might line up a few dozen shelves before realizing you’re off by one peg. You’d have to adjust everything before really getting to work! Make sure your shelves have all the pegs in place, and are solid and level, before placing any books on them.

Camera

Photographs often offer spatial insights that you can’t see with your own eyes. Using your phone to take pictures of the shelves as you work on them can be really helpful. Just take a step back, snap a photo, and look at it to see if the books are balanced and if any adjustments need to be made. You’d be amazed at what you see in the photos. Ideas will come to mind for moving books around by color and size, and how they should be grouped and organized.

Sorting Table or Surface

Stacking books on the floor isn’t the end of the world, but the process can be made a lot easier if you have a table near the shelves to unpack your boxes, sort books into shelf groupings, and stage what you are doing before you do it. Consider grabbing that folding table from the garage or the basement and placing it near the shelves without blocking access.

Cleaning Books

Books are durable and last a long time, but over the years they can pick up dirt and benefit from a cleaning.

The first step in cleaning a book is to determine what materials you are trying to clean. Many of the materials that go into books don’t respond well to liquids and you want to be careful with old or rare books.

Glossy modern jackets are the easiest part of a modern book to clean. We recommend rubbing alcohol (70 percent) to take off any marks and give them a general refreshing. Note that some jackets are laminated on both sides, while others are only laminated on one side. Be careful with any moisture applied to paper with a non-glossy finish as the jacket could be damaged in the cleaning process.

Paper and cloth bindings require a little more of a delicate approach as they may not be able to tolerate any contact with moisture. We recommend using only a damp cloth or the following techniques and tools.

A Staedtler white eraser is an indispensable tool around our office. You can use the eraser to clean up marks on the jackets or in the books (pencil notes, used book prices, etc.), you can also use it to rub away adhesive residue from stickers. If there are smudge marks on the page edges of a book, you can also clean them up with the eraser. Rub firmly, then blow away the eraser fragments. The Staedtler white eraser is also phenomenally effective at rubbing away marks and stains on cloth and paper bindings. It won’t take away that coffee ring but it will clean up any superficial discolorations.

The top edge of books can get dusty over the years. We use either a microfiber cloth to wipe the dust free, or a Swiffer dusting cloth. Some people like those compressed air cans to blow away dust, but it will just send the dust somewhere else and land on your books eventually! There are also mini-vacuums that professional librarians use to clean lots of books at a time, some with attachments that allow you to clean books without removing them from the shelves.

For more advanced cleaning such as removing old bookplates or more troublesome adhesives under stickers, we typically first try to use a palette knife with a smooth edge (available from your local art supply store). Try to get under one of the corners and then delicately peel the bookplate off. Depending on the age of the bookplate and the type of adhesive used, it may come off easily. If not, you might need to make a decision about whether the book looks better keeping the bookplate or sticker in place, or possibly putting a new one of the same size over it. If you proceed with the removal, there is a risk that the book will show permanent damage in that place, however you can use rubber cement as a tool for one adhesive to attract and remove another adhesive. Or a hair dryer works wonders to essentially “fry and dry” the adhesive; then remove the bookplate or sticker little by little.

Moisture damage is a trickier issue to address. If your books are heavily damaged by flooding or exposure to water, one tip is to put them in plastic bags and into the freezer as quickly as possible while you make a plan and consult an expert on whether the books can be salvaged. The freezer is also a good place to arrest any insect damage to books.

If you end up with a book with an unpleasant odor (e.g., smoke or mildew) after returning from a used book buying spree, one strategy to see if it can be improved is to place the book in an airtight plastic bag with a few dryer sheets to draw the odor out. Three days usually works. Then you can dispose of the bag and dryer sheets. The freezer trick is also worth trying to eliminate odors in the books you really want to keep.

Elizabeth, historically, had always been the type of reader who would simply place her books as they arrived straight on the shelf, with no organizational direction or thought beyond where they would fit. She has a good memory so she was able to get by this way for decades, but eventually the haphazard system broke down. Books were stacked double-rowed within the bookshelves and piled on the floor, and her memory of where she’d placed one title over another could no longer keep up. Chaos reigned. Does this sound familiar?

Needing to find relief and to not feel burdened or overwhelmed by the books she owned and loved, Elizabeth dove into the hard work of organizing—first by taking everything off of the bookcases, clearing out the clutter, and then, lastly, putting the books back on the shelf.

In her words:

After living with my bookshelves for years without much notice, I walked into the living room one day and was confronted by them with fresh eyes. My bookshelves were bursting with books! Double-rowed and stacked, each spine was fighting for place on the shelf.

Just by being on the shelf, each book did indeed reveal a piece of me—my character, my interests, glimpses into who I was and what I found important. Yet the organization (or lack thereof) revealed a piece of me, too—one that I was eager to shift. Each book belonged in my story. I just needed a way to tell the story better.

I had seen quite a few images on Pinterest with books organized by color and the effect was stunning. So when I first began to organize my shelves, I tried it out! The look was indeed striking. I loved it.

Over the course of several months, I started shifting books—moving one here, another there—and much to my surprise, the arrangement that worked best emerged, almost as if by magic. The books themselves seemed to sort out where they wanted to be.

I discovered that I tend to like books by one author grouped together and from there loosely arranged by color (unless I get the sense that one book really needs to be by a particular book, like an energy-pull). The kids’ and art books are on the lower shelves. There’s also a section for new books that can rest there until they are added to the to-be-read pile by my bed or placed in their rightful spot on the shelves.

It’s intuitive, not rigid. It has its own sense of organization that my family and I understand, yet has enough wiggle room to simply haphazardly pop a book on the shelf when need be.

The takeaway? There is some work involved in your commitment to rearranging or redoing your bookshelves. If you are lucky enough to start with an empty bookcase or library, you can fill it with intention in a stylish manner.