Objects earn their place on the shelf if they are things you like looking at: a bowl, a framed photograph, a plant that tolerates low light, a stack of coasters you actually use. What kills a bookshelf is small clutter — chargers, receipts, spare keys, batteries. Give those a lidded box on the bottom shelf and the whole wall calms down immediately.
Should I organise my books by colour?
Colour arranging genuinely looks beautiful and it works perfectly well if your relationship with your books is mostly visual — if you rarely take one down, or your collection is small enough that you remember every cover. It falls apart in large collections or when you are looking for a specific title, because you have to remember the jacket rather than the author. A good compromise is to colour-sort one shelf or one bookcase, usually the decorative upper zone, and keep the working shelves organised by subject.
What do I do with books I'll never read again?
Pass them on while they are still wanted: a charity shop, a community library or book exchange box, a hospital or care-home collection, or simply a message to friends offering first refusal. Keep a small "leaving" bag at the bottom of the bookcase so the decision is reversible for a few weeks — anything still in it at the end of the month goes. The ones worth keeping forever are usually obvious: the inscribed ones, the ones you reread, and the ones that mark a particular year of your life.
