We moved into a house at the beginning of May. As with our old apartment and previous places, most of my books had to stay packed up. Now came the time to get them out, and here’s how:
Step 1: Break your body when moving boxes of books into house.
Step 2: Purchase some bookshelves and have 5-year-old son put them together.
Step 3: Place bookshelves where you want them and start to sort books by topic as you unpack them.
Step 4: Realize that there are more books than bookshelf space.
Step 5: Fill bookshelf and then figure out what to do with those that did not fit. Ugh!
The Dispersal of Darwin 
Step 6: Buy more bookshelves, fill them, stack books in any unused corner, stack books in lesser-used corners, move to bigger house and repeat.
Step 7: Dump large quantity of books that you haven’t even looked at for 10 (20, 30, …) years in old paper container for recycling
Step 5.5: Begin looking for imaginative places to put more bookshelves in your house/apartment when all the obvious places get used up, THEN move onto the second part of John’s step: 6 (a bigger place).
Step 5.5 is where I’m at. The books have spilled out of my office (one of the bedrooms in our/the banks house) into the living room and master bed & bath rooms.
Scratch Thony’s step: 7 (boo, hiss).
Then there’s the question of where to put the periodicals (Scientific American, Natural History, Skeptical Inquirer, Skeptic, etc. etc.
Oh, and the DVD/Bluray collection.
And did I mention the comic books?
[Next on “Hoarders”…]
Isn’t it bad for books to be stacked flat, rather that shelved upright? I thought it damaged the spines.
Yes,I can see that there are more than 5 steps! 🙂
Josh – I am not sure.
WOW…books!!!!