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?

By genre - modern novels, classics, reference and also by size (because shelves are different heights) then pushed back ideally to 2" from the edge. Mine are triple stacked.
I am a librarian.

Oh my word, do peole really worry aboyut this sort of stuff?

You'd all be horrified if you came to my house, I tells ya.

In my perfect house all spines aligned and grouped in colours so as to appear in a sort of ordered disorder ( i read that somewhere) In my real house with 3 DC, DD2 being just at 'that age' if i'm lucky they'll stay on the bookshelves for long enough for me to walk out of the room feeling I've left it modearately tidy, only to fing them on the floor again next time I return

Just realised the title says 'those of you with neat uncluttered shelves' - so I am obviously unqualified to comment...

I concur with rustyb- mine are all pulled out, aligned with shelf-edge until little miss cheeky comes along, and pushes them all back as far as they go!

The higher shelves look great though!

Speaking as a librarian, front aligned is the only way to go. Shelves always look better that way. And its always useful to be able to double stack too.

Paperbacks are double stacked, with only books of the same size (A or B format, I seem to recall from my librarian and bookselling past life) allowed on any particular shelf, so the spines are aligned. Penguin classics all together, Penguin orange spines all together, because it looks nicer that way.

Hardbacks (standard size) have their own special shelves.

Outsize books are confined to the very ugly bookcase in the corner of the room, partly hidden by a curtain, where their asymmetry doesn't offend me.

I am very anal about book storage, if nothing else (rest of the house is a tip though). At one time (pre-dcs, too much time on my hands) they were in alphabetical order (by author) too.

Fronting up is neater (despite Rustybear's accurate caveat about what children will then do) and the only way to go after that is by Dewey and then author/title
I think unless you have a massive non-fiction collection Library of Congress is overdoing it somewhat...

You'll all be dlighted to know that my shelves look fantastic now - all books pulled forward! I keep sitting on the sofa just stareing (sp?) at the perfection......and I don't care if flylady doesn't want my house to be perfect!