Book It: A Hometalk Clipboard

Awww man, ya know, those Hometalk folks!  They are ridiculously awesome.  I mean, it's just silly.  In a good way, of course.

They enjoyed my library posting so much they asked me to assemble a clipboard over on their site all about book storage.  Darn cool, yeah?  I'm incredibly honored and flattered and blushy, to say the least.

If you haven't checked out Hometalk, you should get your butt over there.  As I've mentioned here and here, they are an outstanding resource for everything crafty, DIY, home and garden related.  The topic listings, jeez, did you see the topic listings?!  So here's the link again to the clipboard, and if you click here, my profile on their site.

Books, ya know.  We got 'em.  We gotta store 'em and/or display 'em and/or hide 'em, right?  There are five trillion and one ways to do it.  Ok, maybe that's a numerical stretch but as many as there are people with brains, there are ways to show off, hide, or just plain store our books.

Hopefully I got this image to be clickable.  I am a code dummy, so lemme know.  I hope I didn't break my blog.

For me, before the interwebs, amassing my pile o' books was a long, slow, but fun enterprise.  It was about reference, collecting inspiration, a place to get a creative spark, and yeah, eye candy.  The majority of my books are on art, theater, design and architecture.

Since the internet exploded itself everywhere, I haven't purchased many books, sad to say.  There are a few I have on a wish list though.

That last place we lived at, a private owner row house rental over by the United Center, resulted in immediate disaster for my beloved books.  I think I mentioned this.  Yeah, here.  Three weeks after we moved in the basement flooded, soaking, ruining and molding up nearly all of my books.

My boooooooooks!!  Nooooooo!!!  I cried.  I was crushed.  Upset.  And that's being word-choice generous.

Did you hear that?  That was my broken heart crashing to the floor over this one. 

At first our landlords were gracious about it, said they'd replace them all.  Slowly some books trickled in, and not to be an ungracious snotty jerk, but he was buying used library books and the like with stickers and markings and highlighter and crap.  Normally not an issue as I don't mind used books in the least but the ones he was replacing had been in brand new condition.

So I was annoyed.  He was trying to save a buck.  In some cases, mere pennies would have resulted in a better copy.

Sigh.  Am I being a butthead about this?  I know they're just "things."  Tough patooties, I don't care, I'm still distraught.

I made mention of this disparity to him and he became irked.  I think he even yelled at me.  He claimed he wasn't buying those types.  But.  Um.  Yeah, he was.

Slowly the books stopped trickling in.  Then nothing.  I was waiting and waiting.

When we moved out, they got whack-a-doo screwball on us out of nowhere as all landlords seem to do regardless of move-out situation, so I asked him when the rest of my books were coming in.  He got angry instantly (the guy had an anger problem, like for reals), growled that he was DONE buying books, he's not ever buying another book ever AGAIN, and blah blah blah.  "Well, you said in this email here you'd replace them all, you want me to resend it to you?"

Never heard from them again.

Whatev's.

Whoa, holy tangent, huh?

Ok.  Back on track.  So book storage.  It's a dilemma for many people.  For us, we were lucky to turn a bizarre purposeless minuscule room into a library.  Please, I know, not everyone has that option.

Books.  How to store them.  How to show them.  How to hide them even.  They're heavy.  The bindings all vary.  It's a visual cacophony.  Some are big.  Some are small.  They can take up a ton of space.

I put together a clipboard of ideas that are atypical, have a creative bent to them, or most importantly, maybe something you haven't seen before.  Several of the ideas I clipped are DIY-able.  Some may seem a wee challenge to DIY or are downright just-have-to-buy-it, but my goal was to whip up creative pondering about book storage.  Think outside the box.  Or shelf, heh.

Our black painted library.  Yes, love black paint.  Yes,

Or even think innovatively about storage in general.  Or maybe something hits you as damn, that little thing there, totally solves my problem for that completely unrelated thing.

I like to make you think.  :)

So go, check it out, find your next great adventure!

As a side note, Hometalk did not pay me nor compensate me in any way for this post nor clipboard, nor do they sponsor me in any way, I don't work for them, this is all voluntary.  Happily volunteered as they are super cool, I like them, and they say nice things to me.