Advice on storing books?

June 17, 2021 8:22 AM

Book storage question! Okay, beyond donating, storing in offices, and mailing home millions of books, we've also started storing endless books in boxes in closets at home and in a basement storage space. I'm wondering if people have also ended up doing this and settled on a particular system or had particular tips?

I was thinking of buying plastic boxes, but I wonder if anyone found a particular type to work (attractive, reasonably transparent, but stackable, with lids and handles)?

Also have you found a non-labor-intensive system to remember/annotate where given books might be?

I've read this thread, and I'm a little more concerned about the storage/organization process, than keeping things archival and perfect. However, the basement area does get very hot--any ideas? I'm also assuming I should get a desiccant of some kind.

posted by johnasdf to Home & Garden (11 answers total)

I'd say: take a photo of the box, with all the book spines facing up, then print and paste photo on the box lid.

It may also help to give the box a number, and tag the box number with the photo in your gallery.

Something like Evernote can probably OCR the title off the spine if you need to search, which will let you find the box, depending on how you stack the box and if the box number is easily visible.
posted by kschang at 8:39 AM on June 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

Also have you found a non-labor-intensive system to remember/annotate where given books might be?
The Goodreads app is free and lets you scan several barcodes and then shelve them. I'd code each box with a 3 digit number or letter and use that as the shelf name. Label makers work for labeling plastic boxes, but you can also just get alphabet stickers and use those. Put the label in the same spot on each box. Say you use letters and have 3 spots to store boxes, your shelves can be named A - Closet B - Closet C - Basement D - Basement E - Garage F - Garage

Decide if you will group by size or topic, and that might depend on the size of your containers.
posted by soelo at 9:20 AM on June 17, 2021

Tip: Hardbound books are best stored either flat or spine down (firmly supported), so if you're doing the above advice about a picture of the spines, don't actually store them that way.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:23 AM on June 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

Absolutely desiccant. Once you know you needed it it’s too late.
posted by clew at 9:43 AM on June 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: This might be asking too much, but I wonder if anyone settled on a perfect storage form? I discovered that cardboard boxes for wine (gotten for free from the wine store) ended up being a good size for two rows of paperbacks. Good for moving, bad as a long term storage solution...
posted by johnasdf at 9:44 AM on June 17, 2021

I personally use those "office filing boxes" you can get like a dozen for a few bucks? From any office store. Two layers of a lot of paperbacks.
posted by kschang at 10:20 AM on June 17, 2021 [1 favorite]

What's your long-term plan? How often do you expect to need to find the books? Also why boxes instead of shelves?
posted by mskyle at 10:37 AM on June 17, 2021 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Re the basement, I think the idea would be to be able to come down every so often and move down books I don't want and bring up books I'm curious about revisiting. Shelves would be amazing, but the basement is a grungy space and the storage bin is small, so it seems to be easier/safer to have them in boxes.

We also might have some random space in closets, so the idea would be to pile up boxes of books (with maybe in a small shelving system for the boxes) to make it look neater.
posted by johnasdf at 10:52 AM on June 17, 2021

I was wary of Goodreads (because, Amazon) when I did this, so I used LibraryThing to track book location, by using tags like "box 3". The app lets you scan barcodes. For storage, I used bankers boxes, which are similar to / also known as the office filing boxes, and writing labels on masking tape on the sides.
posted by Pronoiac at 1:37 AM on June 18, 2021

Be careful of storing books in a damp basement. They are likely to sustain water damage.
posted by ASlackerPestersMums at 10:38 AM on June 18, 2021

We use a book inventory program called All My Books. Reasonably priced, lots of features (including the ability to add book information from "merely" a file of ISBNs). The feature I mentioning here is the ability to add your own custom field(s) to the database - which in your case could be used to add a 'box identifier' field . Runs on Windows.
posted by TimHare at 8:15 PM on June 30, 2021