Weekly Wrap-up for November 18, 2012: Home Organizing and Bookshelf Questions.

Sometimes it's hard to be a grown-up. You have no one else to get cranky at but yourself when things need to be taken care of around the house. Thankfully, I have a wonderful husband who helps out A LOT, but sometimes I get overwhelmed by the amount of cleaning, organizing, and other straightening up tasks I need to do.

I think I push aside household chores for two reasons. One, I hate cleaning. And two, there is always grading and prep work to do. A very big part of me feels like my work obligations come before scrubbing out the fridge...know what I mean? And that doesn't mean we keep a disgustingly dirty apartment, because we don't, but merely that we live in a very disorganized fashion.

Matt and I both hit our breaking points with the function of our apartment. We WERE looking to move elsewhere (I think I mentioned that on twitter). When we moved here two years ago, we were escaping a very shady apartment complex and thought this would be a better option. Well, we knew at the time it was a lot smaller than our previous apartment (by about 350 square feet or so), but we figured we could make it work. We have a lot of...crap and when we moved in, it was a matter of shoving it wherever it fit, including our storage area in the basement. And in the two years since, we've really just been dealing with the items we shoved away in the fast move into this place. So, we began looking for a new apartment, and a more expensive apartment, since we both have new jobs and hey, we could afford it. But after thinking about it long and hard, it didn't make sense for us to move. We decided to stay and save for a house, since that's what we really want.

The deal is that we would change some things about our current living situation. We need to clear out the clutter, remove unwanted items to the trash or to Salvation Army, and upgrade some of our current "old school" furniture in attempts of living like grown-ups.

New entertainment center (HEMNES from Ikea)

We've started the process in our living room by upgrading our entertainment center and getting rid of a massive amount of clutter (when I say clutter, I'm referring to three months worth of mail stacked on a bookshelf-things like ads, newspapers, etc. WHY did we keep all that crap?). A couple weekends ago, we went and picked up the pieces we needed to finish our new entertainment center from Ikea. Matt finally had some time off and assembled the whole thing on Wednesday. I re-organized and re-alphabetized our movies and TV shows and voila, the apartment already looks a lot better (yes, everything on these shelves are DVDs or TV series).

We also cleared out a lot of lingering items taking up residence under our coffee table and just tossed them-there were magazines, receipts, random pieces of paper, etc that just needed to go. Matt also reorganized all the wires associated with all our techy stuff and spent a lot of time wiping down dust, etc (I can't do that these days-aggravates my lungs too much). The result is that we are both insanely happy with the progress in our living room. The next goal is to get rid of our couch and upgrade. Our current couch belonged to my grandmother. It was probably made in the 60s or 70s...and it is the most hideous abomination of burnt orange plaid. Seriously.

We're also working on moving some bookshelves around. We originally had two open bookshelves on either side of our TV for our DVD collection that need a new home (they are against various open walls in the apartment). We're going to be focused on cleaning out out second bedroom "office" to make room for them. That involves the dismantling of a futon and moving Matt's guitars to other places on the walls. But I am excited to be able to put more books out on shelves instead of keeping them in boxes in the closet (where most of my 2,000 books live...).

That brings me, in a very long, rambling, and a roundabout way to my real questions...about organizing my books. My current set-up is two big bookshelves and one skinny, narrow shelf. The two big shelves that are currently in our living room (on the opposite wall than our new entertainment center) currently house my classics (mainly alphabetized by author). The skinny shelf held a lot of hardcover titles-mainly YA (that shelf used to be in that far corner in the picture above, but doesn't fit anymore-it's going to be moved into the second bedroom with the additional two big shelves). I'm not sure how I want to organize all these books. I am keeping my classics out in the main room, but I don't know where to put some of the books...I have "collections" of books that I don't know what to do with (Shakespeare titles, my Penguin and Puffin clothbounds, AND all the new Penguin English Library editions). Do I keep them separate? Do I intermingle them with my other classics? WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

I'm also debating what to do with the two new shelves I get to stock...I was thinking of making one devoted to YA and the other to sci-fi and fantasy? Or should I intermingle and alphabetize by author? Again, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

I'm aware that this whole dilemma makes me sound a bit silly, but book organizing is a serious business and if anyone can help me, it's you folks. You know what it's like, right? :)

I hope you're all having a splendid November (And seriously, how is the month HALF OVER already? How is it Thanksgiving already? WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE?)! Happy Reading!