Disaster

I'm having a near panic attack. You see, a week ago we moved into our first house. In my very large apartment there was an area around the mantle that seemed absolutely made for displaying my book collection. It was perfect. In the house there is no such area, so I've been struggling with the placement of my shelves. My dad offered to come and take me to work today and showed up 20 minutes early. He wasn't pleased at all with the placement I had and decided we should try a new arrangement. This didn't sound like a bad idea, so I went to a shelf and started unloading it in a very systematic way so that it could be moved. As soon as I had my back turned however my dad started unloading a different shelf, PILING RANDOM BOOKS IN COMPLETELY RANDOM PLACES. He DESTROYED the meticulous arrangement I had, which accounts for as much overlap in subject matter as possible and so is so tightly plotted out that each book really only has one place. My living room is full of piles all over the place and all mixed up. And of course by the time this happened I had to go to work, leaving the whole room a mess. I feel like it's going to be ages before I can get everything back to where it goes, it's like he smashed a puzzle that I'd been working on for years. Worst of all he passed it off like no big deal. He didn't care, he seemed to think it would be just so easy to get everything back in its place. Has this happened to you? Is there a way to go about fixing this?

How many books are we talking about? If it's only a couple hundred, it shouldn't take too long.

This has happened to me after several unfortunate moving experiences where boxes of carefully labeled books get tossed about helter skelter. Look upon it as an excuse to mess around with your books. My dad didn't get it either.

I haven't counted in a while but my guess is about 350 or so. Not a lot by many people's standards but enough to be a real headache. And I'm VERY OCD about them even though I'm a messy person in every other respect. I'm going to have a fun night ahead of me.

Having an opportunity to handle and look upon one's books should be thought of as a treat. Enjoy it. They're not damaged or thrown out. Perhaps there will be another, even better way to display them and highlight different items from your collection.

James

I was expecting a fire or a burst pipe or locusts or.....

>5 Keeline:: I agree with you, Keeline.

I love organizing my books. The problem is, my books are already organized. So there isn't much fun organizational work to be done.
Whenever I move (which seems to be very, very often, I am practically a bedouin) I purposefully dis-organize my books, packing books from here, there and everywhere into boxes at random. Then, when I unpack them, I get to re-arrange them.
My sisters and I used to actually take all of our books out of our bookshelves every few months, mix them up on the floor, and re-shelve them directly afterward, just for fun.
It gives you a chance to evaluate sections or differing collections, and remind yourself of some books that you haven't picked up in awhile.