It’s a new month and so I’m back with another Mini Refresh! If you don’t know what that is, on the first Thursday of the month I will pick one thing in my house to give a refresh too. I don’t always have time or money to reorganize and deep clean whole rooms but I do have time to do small areas; making a little progress at a time.
If you haven’t read last months Mini Refresh, you can get caught up here.
For this month’s Mini Refresh, I will be working on this messy bookcase in my dining room. It has become a sort of catch-all for me, gathering more and more papers, notebooks, stickers and all kinds of things. It’s a disorganized mess, that is slowly getting worse, so before it gets too out of hand, I’m going to organize and style it.
Lets get started:
The first thing I need to do is take everything off of the shelves and give them a good dusting. I wiped everything down with a dusting mitt and polished the bookcase with a little Old English. I made sure to get all of the shelves, the sides and the top, along with wiping out underneath the bookcase, and in all of those hard to reach areas.
While that air dries a little, I started to sort through all of my books and clean them as well. I’m not going to put dirty books onto a clean bookcase! As I’m doing this I’m going to be sorting through everything and seeing if I need to find new homes for any books. A lot of these books are old and worn so I’m taking my time, and being extra careful.
Now comes the fun part, putting everything back and styling it! I’m taking some advice from the book “Martha Steward’s Organizing” and stacking some of the books horizontally. Since I don’t have enough books to fill this bookcase, this will help fill in some of that empty space, break up the pattern, and end-cap the books that are in there vertically.
I’ll also be adding in some trinkets that I already have, creating a little bit of a theme in the bookcase to tie everything together. This is a great way to add a piece of yourself to your home, like we talked about in 3 Simple Ways to Turn Your House into a Home, except in this case the decor I’ll be using is more for eye appeal than functionality.
We’ll talk about this a little more, as we go on.
I’m starting with the bottom shelf, it’s the tallest, so I’ll be putting my large and chunky Bible study Books in here, along with this poem book that has one of my grandmothers poems in it. I’ve decided to organize this shelf by size, as they are all different authors but the same basic subject.
I lined them up how I wanted them and used this old book and these Bibles to end-cap the vertical books. I then placed the poem book on the opposite end of the self, since it doesn’t really go with the rest of the books.
The empty space between the books is a great spot to add in some decor! Since most of these books were my grandmothers, I wanted to use decor that reminded me of her, while still being my style. I also have a cat who will most definitely try to get into this shelf so I decided to play it safe and use this wooden “blessed” sign to start. I then added an old blue mason jar in the back along with an old bottle with a rose I crocheted many years ago.
Once I was happy with that, I moved onto the middle shelf, this is where I’m keeping my devotional books. I’ve decided to start putting them on the opposite end from the books on the previous shelf, and organized them by color and author.
For this one’s decor, I kept the old bottle theme going and placed a few small ones on top of the books I placed horizontally, using a white one to tie into the white of the “blessed” sign from the self below. I also added this metal snail someone made for me, it’s a little goofy but I love it!
Now for the messiest shelf: the top one. This is the shelf I’ve been keeping my budget binder, planner supplies and random pieces of paper, I didn’t know what else to do with, on. I’m going to be using this self to continue to hold some of this stuff temporally, until I get my office area put together, but it cannot continue to be this big of a mess.
First thing first, I sat down and sorted through everything, and if I’m being completely honest this is why I put off organizing this bookcase for so long. Just like the books, I separated everything out into piles, and got rid of anything I didn’t need or want anymore. I then used this small fabric tote I had to store my markers, stickers and other planner supplies, it’s not exactly my style but it will do for now.
Once that was taken care of, I found new homes for the other things I’ve been sticking in here and put the little tote, budget binder, blog planner and my notebook on this shelf. Unfortunately there wasn’t any room for decor, so we’ll save that for the top of the bookcase!
Now that the bookcase itself is complete, I can style the top however I’d like. I started by playing around with the placement of this vintage scarf I’ve had for years, but never worn, and where to put the record player. The scarf slid around a lot so I had to tape it down with some masking tape until I decided on where to put my record player so it could keep the scarf in place.
Once I was happy with that, I moved a plant from off another shelf to this one so I could water it easier. To keep with the old bottle theme of the rest of the bookcase I set this coke bottle next to the plant with these metal roses in it that my husband made for me, to tie into the metal of the snail on the middle shelf.
And just like that with a little time and effort I was able to transform this messy, catch-all, bookcase into an eye pleasing, function bookcase!
I really like the way this bookcase looks now, it’s less messy and I can easily find what I’m looking for on that top shelf without pulling out a bunch of paper and notebooks.
Doing these Mini Refreshes have been helping me keep myself accountable to finally take care of those smaller spaces in my home that I’ve been putting off for far too long. I really enjoy sharing them with you and hope that you can take some inspiration from them to use in your own home!
Tell me, what are some ways you like to refresh your home? Please share your thoughts and questions, I would love to hear from you!
