M. Suzanne Terry

I was sitting in my living room on Tuesday night, minding my own business. When I got up to get another cup of tea, I glanced at the bookshelf nearest to my entryway – the one with all the espresso cups and knick-knacks that generally serve no purpose but looking cute and collecting dust – and I felt the familiar pull of change. I don’t typically like change…except when it comes to reorganizing. Especially when it comes to bookshelves.

Two hours later, I had piles of books all around the living room, waiting to find their new place on the shelves.

I started with the knick-knack shelf, making space on it. I moved the espresso cups to the kitchen drawer with the others. I took most of the pictures off the shelf and picked places to hang them on the walls or prop them up in other places:

The main thing that needed to find a new home were the boxes of CDs, but that was easy enough:

That left a lot of space for books.

Next, I started moving cookbooks, foodie fiction, and foodie memoirs – basically anything that might have a recipe in it – to the newly empty-ish shelf. There was a dilemma. Its shelves are not as deep or tall as the larger shelves from whence they came. So some of the books were either too tall or too wide (or both) to fit in the new space.

I found a place for them, but it definitely turned a small job into a huge one. Cue more piles. And a second night of rearranging.

After about three hours of work on Wednesday night, I finally had the shelf like I want it:

(This is as light as I could get it. It was late, y’all.)

If you look on the left in that picture, you can see the large pile of books I’m giving away. That might be the biggest accomplishment of this mini-project. It’s hard to give books away. So long, dear friends.

My arms are so sore, but my shelves are so cute. Worth it.