Now that the electronics are in place (post on that coming soon!), I was finally able to organize my bookshelves!

I thought long and hard about how I wanted to organize them... alphabetically by title or author? Categorized by topic? Dewey decimal system? What I settled on was much more aesthetically pleasing than any of those others: COLOR!

I'd loved it when I saw it here:

Shelves found on Apartment Therapy. Looky dat Pug.

So I decided I'd try it out myself! I started with this blank slate.

Baby dog was very helpful in this process.

The idea is to hide all of those unsightly cords and work around the speakers.
I began by stacking all of my books in piles of color (ROYGBIV + Black and White).

Stacks o' books.

After all of the books were piled up, I realized that the amount of books that I had was not enough to fill the space I had. So I measured each of the stacks individually and found out how much space the books themselves would be taking up.

Publishers love red and blue.

Then I measured a cubby to find out how many cubbies the books would be taking up. Then came the troubleshooting. I knew that I was going to put a chair in the corner eventually, so that knocked out the bottom-left four cubbies as book storage space. By my math, the books would be taking up 17 cubbies, so I decided to concentrate them in the middle of the unit. Then, I would border the whole unit with DVD storage boxes from IKEA.


I also decided that before I started the rainbow effect, I'd place the white and black books around the outsides of the shelves.

White on the outside to blend with the storage boxes, Homer being helpful, RHOBH on the TV.

Then started in with the color:

Almost there!

All done with the books!

So then I just needed to add the storage boxes and put the chair in place.

And a Charlie tail for added effect.

I'm really happy with the overall effect. I also LOVE the chair there. What I cozy little reading corner! What do you guys think?