Those of you with neat, uncluttered looking shelves - are your books all pulled out so the spines align or pushed back so they don't align?

[MrsFogi]

Striving for perfection here in my flylady decluttering I am clearing off the shelves and putting the books back so how do I arrange them? Spines aligned, lined up by height order, width etc etc?

lol flylady- says dont be a perfectionist!!
however i like mine spines aligned in size order, and in grouped colours if same height. not that i'm a bit particular lol

my god how anal does that sound
sorry!

By author, of course!

I like to have some lying down flat in between the ones on their sides...looks a bit more interesting. (Can't believe I'm posting about arranging books on a shelf!)

Mine are only in height order. Ds rearranges my books too much for me to do anything other than that!!!

oh you can't deliberately arrange books like that surely

books look happier when sat higgledy piggledy

perhaps go and polish your skirting boards or something instead

ooh yes no perfectionism

bad you

hehe i said when i arrange them- lol look at my shelves at the mo and they are not like that 2 dc see to that they are most definately higgledy piggledy upsode down and back to front etc, i havent arraanged them for a llloonng time

Spines aligned.

I thought I was anal until, as a bridesmaid, I had to go with the budding bride for a fitting at the dressmaker's home. The dressmaker must have had up to a thousand CDs in order of colour, dark to light blue, dark to light red, etc. It looked stunning, but a little sinister...

Aligned with each other, right at the front of the shelf - that way you don't have to dust the front of the shelf

And sorted by genre obv

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wow, I never even knew people did sorting like this. How extraordinary. Doesn't it make you feel like you're in a library?

I have lots of books but no shelves as shelves = clutter imo. So the books are in a cupboard and I can chuck em in anyway I want and shut the door. Voila neat and tidy.
Some of you have too much time on your hands...
Or maybe I am subconsciously rebelling against super-anal exp who had hundreds of LPs (yes it was a few years ago ladies) all arranged in public view in my lounge, in alphabetical order by band and then by album title....

PULLED OUT OF COURSE

blimey fox and flibbert, so what happens when you get that 'i NEED to read X again' and it takes you 10 minutes to look for it and you can't find it?

i'm utterly disorganised in everything but books and CDs. Not aligned in any way, can't have everything, just by genre and then by author/composer/band.

AND SORTED BY GENRE AND ALPHABETICALLY WITHIN GENRE

ANAL, MOI?

The ideal is pulled out so's to make a neat even line along the shelf (but for me not right on edge as then they tip over when you go to get one, but I can understand the anti-dusting imperative).

Squished back & uneven looks all uncomfy for the poor books.

But it's one of those things that rather depends on how many you have in the house. Dd (year 2) had to do a challenge for Book Day - sizing up books in one room in our house. She claimed she was going to do one of the toilets - I insisted she did her room - she came back shattered an hour later to tell me she'd counted 484 books. (And she was right.) So, moral of story, flylady serried spines don't happen here.

Pulled out so that I can pile more books horizontally behind them!

lol choosy. I don't know what happens then. I generally remember where most things are even though the house is chaos. It's sort of minorly organised chaos. We have so many books, they'd run into the thousands I think grrr.

I just find it amazing that someone would organise their books or CDs like this. So the only purpose is to be able to find books/CDs again easily? I suppose that would be helpful but I'm far too lazy to go through them all and do that. Generally, I have the ones I want to read next to me on the bedside table (normally 4 or 5) and I move those back and forth with the ones in the bookcases.

I think it's good enough that they are in the bookshelf. They are all different sizes so I don't try to allign them or order them in anyway.

By category and then alphabetically. Outsize books in a special shelf. I think I must be a librarian at heart.

Pulled out.

I like books all higgeldy piggeldy so that anything might grab my attention at any time. Ours are thus arranged vaguely by genre but no more - eg: bookcases of children's books (plus a shelf full in the pantry), one shelf of Drama, one of poetry etc. This also forces me to cull once a particular genre space is full.

Bink - Oh good, I'm not the only one who has too many books for this question to be an issue. I've just been looking at our books (one full wall of our living room) thinking, "well they're all pushed back but they all still align. What are they talking about?"
The big books which do tend to be different sizes are all on the bottom shelf so hidden by the settee.

Our are sorted mainly by genre, or what they look like. I've also arranged it so that all books which are interesting to browse rather than read can be easily reached without having to get up off the settee.

Word of warning from an ex-librarian - books aligned with the front of the shelf have an irresistible attraction for small children, who will go along the shelves pushing them in again.

Years of practice have rendered me very quick at aligning books with the front of the shelf, but at home I usually have mine pushed back, so I can dump things on the front of the shelves - like more books....