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Three Ways to Organize Your Growing Book Collection at Home

If you’re a bibliophile and have a collection that’s growing steadily, then you’ve most likely worried about looking for the best way to keep them in good condition. And since carelessly cramming them into every pile or corner isn’t going to cut it, you need a better option that makes it easier for people to find as well as make it more likely for you to pick one up and start reading.

Here are three ways on how you can thoroughly organize all your books at home:

Invest in the right storage options

The best way to make a home for your books is to simply buy bookshelves, especially if you don’t already have a current place for them. Be sure to choose a designated area for your bookshelf, or if you have a lot of books, designated areas for your bookshelves. Getting plastic storage boxes is also okay if you don’t have as much room, but the problem with using boxes rather than shelves it that they are more likely to attract dust and cobwebs.

They can also be quite heavy and difficult to move when they’re full. Aside from storage, you should also make sure you have a way to get any dust and cobwebs off your books, and this is where having a vacuum cleaner can really come in handy.

Stack your books

Don’t be afraid to pile them down on top of one another! If your books happen to be wide and there isn’t enough space on the shelf or box to keep them upright, your next best solution is to lay them down and pile them on top of one another. What’s great about organizing your books at home is that you can sort them in any arrangement you want: whether it’s by genre, alphabetical order, or even by cover, color, or the date you bought them.

Use a cataloguing system

When you have a growing collection of books that you plan on turning into a full home library, you need to have a fast, efficient method of sorting through different genres and titles to find what you’re looking for. To do this, you need to have a system. Depending on the collection size, you can use either of two types of systems for your collection. One of them is Dewey Decimal System, which categorizes books by main class, division, and section. The other is the Library of Congress Classification System, which organizes according to class, subclass, and topic area.

Lastly, you should know when to donate a book or not. If you’re not planning on reading it anytime soon, it might be better off donated, whether it’s at a second-hand store, a local library, or even a nearby school. If you don’t have anywhere you can donate books to, you can even choose to recycle paperbacks as an alternative.

How to Choose a Quality Cutlery Set for Your Kitchen

Cutlery isn’t something that you need to buy more than a few times in your life, and since you’ll be using it nearly every day, it’s important to find a set that’s not only high quality, but is also something that should be easy to hold and use. Here are a few things you need to keep in mind when looking for that particular set that works for you and your kitchen:

1.  Think classics

First and foremost, utensils need to be functional. While you can easily find many modern sets that look amazing in the kitchen you have in mind, they may not always be completely functional or even ergonomic. You should also keep in mind that the utensils you have shouldn’t feel weird to hold food or eat with, and with a classic set of cutlery, it’s pretty hard to go wrong.

2.  Find sets that will be in production for a long time

Don’t settle for trend-driven cutlery sets – what you want in a complete set of cutlery is that it’s one that will be around for a long time. The reason for this is that trend-driven pieces or sets tend to be out of stock after a certain period (think a few months after they come out on shelves) and it’s likely that you won’t be able to find a replacement if something gets lost, dulled, or becomes unusable.

Even if you’re buying the same brand as your parents did, check the metal quality to see if it hasn’t changed – many brands do this in order to cut corners, and can make your cutlery set look and feel inconsistent as a result.

3.  Order the knives separately

Sometimes, you will have to accept that even though the spoons and forks look nice and are great to hold, the cooking or chef’s knives that come with the set aren’t as good in terms of quality. This is because knives used in cooking dishes are something else entirely. They are made of different metals than forks and spoons and need to be re-sharpened, and a good multi-purpose knife can easily cost a good amount of your budget.

4.  Take time with the purchase

When it comes to building up your collection or set, it’s also really important to take into account the time it will take in collecting the pieces you need. This is because there’s a good chance that you won’t be able to find everything that works well together visually and aesthetically, as well as in terms of ergonomics.

You should especially make sure to compare different brands to one another when you’re contemplating buying a full set in one purchase. Take a close look at each of the utensils and see whether they work together as a set or not.