Bookshelf Be Gone

I mentioned in my last craigslist post that I recently sold three things, I sold the red chair and glass coffee table from the living room but I've kept mum about the third thing until now... I sold the black bookcase in my bedroom!

I'm actually really sad about it because I loved that bookcase. I've said it like a hundred times but this bookcase sort of changed my life (more on my books obsession here). Now that I know the glories of having glass doors on bookshelves I can never go back (no more dusting book pages!). So why did I sell it? Well, that's a bit of a long answer. 

I'm at that point in my home decorating where things get weird. My house looks done and most people would be content to leave it where it is, but not me. I have a big vision for this house. Which means, I am now starting to replace the 'place holder' furniture. Unfortunately, that includes this black bookcase. While I loved this bookcase, it did not go well with the paint color in my bedroom (it was too dark against the blue wall) and I there wasn't another place for it my house. Plus, I have plans for a bigger and better bookcase. I've literally been talking about my dream bookcase for like nine months (here) now but selling this bookcase gets me one step closer to actually buying it. 

For a refresher, this is the bookcase I want:

via IKEA

It will go in the dining room on the big blank wall:

That big wall to the right (it's bigger than it looks, from the end of the frames to the corner of the room is about 8') is where the new bookcase will go. So the bottom line is this: I sold the black bookcase so I can use the money to help buy the bigger white bookcase for the dining room. 

But, I haven't purchased the white bookcase just yet so for the time being this is what's going on in my room. First it was a blank wall (I took the silver shelf to the basement to use for laundry and cleaning supplies):

The other side of my room was cray. I own a lot of books.

What you may not be able to see is that there are three large tubs hidden under there full of books. Yeah... I have a lot of books.

Since I haven't planned my trip to IKEA yet and I don't want to leave my books like this any longer (it was sort of suffocating in there) I came up with a temporary solution.

I'm going for a sort of 80-year-old-professor-of-English-Lit-who-has-traveled-the-world-and-been-married-seven-times vibe. Are you feeling it? Now that I think about it, said woman would probably have more Proust and less young adult fiction... ah, well. 

I started by stacking the big books first, mostly photo albums and yearbooks (why do I keep those?). 

Then I gradually added books.

Here is the view from the doorway. It feels so open in there now! I'm sort of loving it. I don't have plans for that wall yet. My goal is the get the bookcase for the dining room, move these books onto the dining room shelves, and then deal with this wall. 

I stacked these up yesterday and so far Bob hasn't bothered them. The likelihood of one of these stacks falling over is high, I mean it is just books stacked up like three feet high so yeah, not foolproof or anything, but so far so good. 

The overflow is still in the corner, but it is much cleaner now! 

I also added a little stack by my nightstand of the books I haven't read yet. 

Also, I got rid of two huge tubs of books! Yep, I'm pretty proud of that. I was super selective with what I kept. I know I'm about to buy a huge bookcase, but I have so so many books that even getting rid of two tubs means I still have all these books left over. If you are curious as to what I kept and what I got rid of here was my criteria:

1) Will I read it again? The answer was 'yes' a surprising amount of times. There are about 30-ish books that I re-read regularly, as in either once a year or bi-annually.
2) Is it pretty? A shallow question, but some books are just so pretty that I had to keep them. I have a lot of very beautiful books that I probably won't ever read again, but they are pretty enough to keep around (to use for styling).
3) Is it sentimental? A lot of my books have sentimental value. Either they were gifts from loved ones, books from my childhood, or they remind of a specific time in my life. People are sentimental about all kinds of things and I am sentimental about books.

So that is my 'in progress' update on the bookcase situation. I'll keep you posted!