Don't try this at home.

OK, so I spent a while taking the books off my shelves last night, smiled a lot while I was sitting on the floor surrounded by a pretty rainbow of books, and then began to put them back on the shelf. Then . . . disaster struck!

I had put the red and orange books on the top shelf, was just reaching up with the yellows, and - argh! - the top shelf came crashing down, and clonked the second shelf on its way (this didn't fall down, but I took it down just in case). Books and screws everywhere. Not a happy bunny.

I then remembered that when David and I put those shelves up on the wall, we really struggled as our drill wasn't very powerful. We decided to get as many screws into the wall as we could, and then made the shelves safe enough by supporting the top shelf with taller books on the shelf below. We had planned to put the shelves up properly once we had a better drill (which we now have), but obviously forgot. I obviously weakened the top shelf when I took the supporting books away from the shelf below.

Anyway . . .

I've managed to put some of the books back on the remaining shelves, and piled the others up on top of the cupboard below:

I'm really pleased with how neat it looks - it turns our books from a bit of a mess, into more of a feature. David even admitted that they looked, "sweet".

I was so inspired with how good the books looked, that I also sorted out our poetry books.

The bookcase on our landing also got the treatment:

Ah, the littlest changes can be so pleasing. I know it's not the most practical solution, but as we have so many books in our house (I haven't shown you our spare room yet!), it takes a while to find a book anyway, so I don't think colour-coding them will make much difference to searching time.

Right . . . guess I'd better find some time to put those shelves up more securely - will show you what it looks like when it's done.