Feminist Pub 16: where the Bluestockings develop armoured stockings to deal with the thousand paper cuts

Our books are definitely in chaos. Reference books, books for work, kids' books, my books, DH's books, parenting books etc. But music books and cookbooks are generally in one place. Half the books are on DC's beds. I periodically make them clear out their beds.

Now I'm trying to think of a good place for plastic containers for food use.

Can you tell I'm a bit bored of work at the moment? Not that it's not interesting, but I need to be getting on to another thing but this thing is still dragging on...

Sad to say to a bunch of intellectuals, but my dad was quite a reader, and my mother was intelligent but didn't much hold with learning for its own sake. I can recall helping my dad arrange books on the shelves, and he picked up one book and solemnly said, "That was one of the three books that your mother brought to our marriage bed." Well, the two of them got along very well together in spite of that.

I have no idea how many books we have.

In theory they're organized but DD and DH are not the kind to tidy up after themselves.

However, we have two floor to ceiling Billi shelves, several other shelves in general storage units, quite a few in a separate closet for work and uni things, I have a couple of shelves at school and there are always numerous books lying around or tucked in drawers. We also now use kindle so these are all passé books rather than current.

How many does that work out as? Lots? Many? Or a paltry few?

Oh dear! You'll have all those book-upmanship people from AIBU judging you for having no books if you do that!

I'd be perfectly happy in your house Petula. A visitor would be hard pushed to know we have books at all, because the ones I keep are stored in underbed storage boxes, under my bed! Since visitors don't normally rummage under beds (not ones I'd be inviting back at any rate) they probably think we only have children's books.

Oh dear, I rather like my books higgledy piggledy. Reference books (basically those left over from the various bits of higher education we have done) are organised, but novels are all over the place and tucked into nooks and crannies. If I thought of a particular book I would know exactly where it was, but a visitor wouldn't

Sorry you would feel quite itchy in my house!

House, that sounds like perfectly normal behaviour to me.

I actually feel a bit uncomfortable in houses where people have books all higgledy piggledy, with no discernable order. I know it's my problem, but I'd feel happier if I felt free to be allowed to sort them out. (No one's ever going to ask me to their house ever, I know.)

We 'might' have bought this house because of the recording space in the cellar and the room for me to have a study/library. Possibly.

I used to feel like that Stormy but the reality is that I don't have a big enough house to accommodate all the books I have ever owned, so I had to force myself to be more ruthless with them. I have all my 'professional' books about managing behaviour etc, and I have a couple of parenting books that I will keep for a long time, but novels I get rid of. I read nearly 100 novels last year, I don't have space for the thousands of books I have gone through in my life (plus the ones that dp and the dds have read).

I'm slightly horrified at the thought of giving any of my books to charity shops. They number around a thousand, and they've been a sort of gradually expanding wallpaper for as long as I can remember. Sure, I'm never actually going to sit and read eg Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Primer. It serves no functional purpose to me whatsoever. But if it were gone, there'd be a gap in the books. Dreadful thought.

Our books are not arranged in any systematic way. I just periodically look them over to memorise where everything is. We have only about 6 bookshelves. I think.

I take my books to the book bank next to the clothes bank in Morrisons car park, that way nobody realises that ALL the books were from me, because charity shops have turned me away in the past too. Dd's books get passed on to cousins who are the right age for them though, dn1 is a couple of years younger than dd1 and my youngest cousin is one year younger than dd2. The children are very grateful, the parents not so much.

I do all the "sorting of Stuff" in our house too, even though dp actually has more time to do it due to working pt and also me taking dd2 out at the weekends. He does general housework, but not any big sorting projects, because apparently I know what gets played with better than he does , and I have more clutter because somehow his computer stuff doesn't count as clutter but my craft stuff does.

I have still to collect a lot of my books from storage, so I've no clue how many I have. The Dewey idea has merit for me.

I'm going to end up with the situation where charity shops are asking me not to bring in any more books again though, because I just get the damned things dumped on me...

Bloody hell.

I have around 4000 books, so... yeah.

Ebear keep it simple - sorting my books took longer than I could ever have imagined tho greatly satisfying.

I might alphabetise them as well. Or put them into chronological order, or author order..... oh god, this is turning into my record collection from the 80's isn't it?

I have had serious discussions with a friend about whether it was going too far to arrange everything under full Dewey classification...

(It is; I would need a bigger house. But they are shelved by category, and for fiction, by author.)

You could sort them by spine color. It looks very pretty that way and apparently people who do this say it's easy to find them as they remember what a book looks like.

I'm going to deal with 'The Stuff' especially the books in the next couple of weeks. If I'm putting all my books on shelves so that I can actually see them all, I really need to get rid of the 'Oh! Puffins loves books, so let's palm this box of utter tripe off on her' books that various people have given me and I've been too polite to scream and run away from.

I might alphabetise them as well. Or put them into chronological order, or author order..... oh god, this is turning into my record collection from the 80's isn't it?

God yes. The Stuff. I have the reputation in our family for being messy. But at least I deal with Stuff not just shove it in a cupboard.

I need a house that declutters itself. I'm the one who gets rid of outgrown clothes/broken toys/rubbish books etc. Which is quite therapeutic usually, but gets a bit much other times.