The Great Book Shelf Escapade

The great journey began when my floor, the tops of my bookshelves, my bed, and the random nooks and crannies of my apartment became overloaded with books.  Something had to be done.  Something drastic!  Translation:  buy a new bookshelf.

That’s exactly what I did.  I ended up buying a cheap bookshelf from evil-mart, because that’s all I can afford at this point in my life, and because I’ll end up getting rid of most of my furniture at some future date anyway.  Of course, when you buy cheap furniture, you get cheap instructions, and I ended up putting one of the panels on backwards, which made removing it to fix the mistake somewhat difficult.  Eventually, I got things in place and started loading up the new shelf with books, and re-organizing my huge collection (by type and then alphabetically by author).

First, the before images (you can click the images below if you want to see larger versions):

It all looks rather hectic and disorganized, doesn’t it?  Well, that’s where this beauty comes in:

I was actually pretty surprised by the shine of the wood.  It looked quite nice, despite the fact that the whole thing is made of (awful) particle board.

The result?  Basically a pointless endeavor in being organized.  See for yourself:

The problem?  I can’t stop buying books.  You should see the other parts of my apartment.  They’re piling up again.  I love the darn things.  They smell great, they look great, and I can’t help snatching them up when I’m out and about.  It just means that I start living, sleeping, and eating with paper…

But there is some good news out of all of this:  most of the books on top of the shelves in the last picture are supposed to be there; I am trying to get some stylish bookends so I can have a section of science books and a section of books for my thesis.  I’ve also turned other parts of my house into the space for school books, which keeps them off the shelves for a while (most of those books will end up on the new shelf, which you can see still has space).

In any case, the whole thing was good while it lasted.  Things were in good order for a short while, after all, but my addiction got the best of me.  What is a book freak supposed to do?