Three Ways to Double the Capacity of Your Bookshelf
If you are a book lover and love to read, you are probably accumulating books at an alarming rate. They overflow your bookshelves and begin to accumulate on the floor, on tables, in almost every corner of your home, no matter how strange or out of place they may be. Books stacked on the toilet cistern? Of course, why not.
You may be able to overcome this by purchasing more bookcases —until you literally cram as many bookcases into your space as the laws of physics will allow. Yet I can guarantee that even when you fill every possible space in your home with books, you will continue to buy more books. This is the nature of this disease. If this describes you, don’t start cleaning out your books just yet. There are ways to double the storage capacity of the bookshelves you already have.
Risers
One of the easiest and most effective ways to increase the storage capacity of a bookshelf is to add several risers behind each shelf. This instantly and literally doubles the number of books you can fit on each shelf, as shown below. Essentially, you’re creating a slightly raised second shelf, sort of like a store display. Then you can line up a whole second row of books in the back – they won’t be as accessible, so it’s better to put books you don’t pick up every day there, but the extra space is magical.
You can easily DIY this using scrap shoe boxes or egg cartons – just line them up at the back and cut them to size. Or you can make your own—if you’re handy with woodworking, a few pieces of wood can make a sturdy riser with minimal effort. Or you can buy acrylic stands like these – they come in different lengths so you can mix and match depending on the width of your shelves.
The riser solution works best with paperback books; Hardback books are larger and probably can’t be stacked that way on standard shelves. If you have adjustable shelves, you can increase the height of the shelves so that it works with hardbacks and large books, but this will reduce the space for other shelves, so you will have to wash – you will have to do it. some measurements to see if it works.
Palette holders
One TikTok user shared a brilliant solution for increasing the storage capacity of your bookshelf: makeup palette organizers , like this one or this one . Once filled with books, you can fold them flat and easily pull them out when you want to browse your collection—usually six or seven books deep. The holders are easy to pull out, and you can mix them with books traditionally stacked vertically for a more attractive look, or use as many books as you can to fit as many books in there as possible.
Additional shelves
A simple but effective way to increase the storage capacity of your bookshelves is to add one or more shelves to your closet. You probably won’t double your capacity this way, but it is an easy and cheap way to fit more books. If your bookcase has pre-drilled holes for shelves, this is fairly easy to do:
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Sort your books. First, sort your books by height.
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Organize your shelves. Arrange the shelves so that each is high enough to accommodate a specific group of books.
Your goal is to be as efficient as possible by freeing up enough space in your closet for at least one more shelf. You can purchase standard-width (30-inch) shelves from Ikea individually that will go well with most finishes (be sure to purchase extra support pegs if you need them).
If your bookcase doesn’t have pre-drilled holes, you will of course have to drill them yourself. You can buy a shelf mount that will make this much easier (and neater). And you can certainly save a small amount of money by buying the wood, sawing and processing it yourself, although you will pay on time and put in the effort.
Laying horizontally
Finally, if you don’t want to physically transform your shelves, you can simply stack books horizontally. If you organize your books carefully, horizontal stacking usually allows you to fit a few more books on the shelves since you can use all the vertical space. You can probably put two layers of books on each shelf, although the back layer will be hidden and difficult to access. This won’t give you much extra space, but it can be useful if you just need to squeeze a few more volumes onto those shelves.