Dusty and musty — ewwww.
It was time to dust our bookshelf, and by “time to dust” I mean the dust was an inch or so thick and inviting its friends over to spend the night without an invitation. What kind of dust party is this (Illus. Third shelf down, far left)? Like any good parent, it was time I put my foot down and grounded those unruly particles. I began to dismantle the labyrinth of books so I could do a thorough job, and it dawned on me that this might be the perfect time to organize our books by color.
This trend has been around for awhile now, just long enough for it to receive the inevitable amount of backlash from book purists, who say it’s difficult to find a tome if it’s not in some kind of logical order. My response? Dudes, look at my before photo. My books were in no semblance of order before. They’re far easier to find now:
Clean after (and a pretty rainbow, thankyouverymuch)
We started on top with black spines, which took up almost the entire top (save the gray ones at the end). Then brown, yellow and orange take up the second shelf. Red, purple and blue the third, and white the bottom two. It’s not as pretty as this one or as perfect as this one, but I’m pleased with the result.
We were hot and sweaty by the time we finished this little project, but at least it wasn’t as time-consuming as this 2004 art installation in a San Francisco bookstore:
For more bookshelf rainbows, check out this Flickr pool.
