My Bookcases and Shelves

I just walked through my house checking out all the bookcases and shelves and was amazed at how many I found. We'll start in the basement.

In the basement we have no bookcases, but an amazing amount of shelves. One wall is entirely covered by shelves that hold primarily paints and painting supplies as well as some miscellaneous hardware. The wall next to it has two workbenches (so covered in stuff it's close to unusable) with shelves underneath which hold tools. A rolling red metal tool case, which is basically a set of draws and shelves on wheels, holds more tools. This wall is rounded out by two tall sets of stainless steel (or maybe chrome that looks like stainless) rolling shelves that hold my wife's pottery tools and supplies. The next two walls have primarily built in shelves made from rough hewn lumber we use for storage, and two additional sets of metal shelves next to the staircase hold food stuffs, mainly cans. A plastic cabinet full of shelves also holds foods. This one has closing doors and protects anything mice might get at. We hopefully don't have mice, but living in the woods, field mice do attempt to get in every winter.

On the ground floor we have bookcases in the one downstairs bedroom. The bookcases here are a mishmash of hand me downs. The large closets have metal wire shelves installed which hold clothes, kids toys, as well as a TV and far too many video tapes we need to go through some day.

The dining room has wooden wall shelves all along one side proudly displaying my wife's beautiful pottery, which we also often use during dinner when guests are over. The kitchen, along with the normal cabinets, has a long low white wooden bookcase that holds cookbooks.

The bathrooms, upstairs and down, as well as the front closet and small hall closet upstairs, have modular wire closet shelving. The bathrooms hold bathroom stuff like shampoos, soaps, and lotions as well as household cleaning supplies and light bulbs. The hall closets are arranged to hang clothes as well as store hats, gloves, scarves, mittens and similar on the wire shelves above.

The living and family rooms both have wooden bookcases which hold plenty of books as well as knick knacks and mementoes and pictures. We also have candles and flashlights on the corner wall shelves for power outages, which living in the sticks at the end of a dead end road happen too frequently.

The laundry room has two very long wire shelves, maybe 9-10 feet long, holding kitchen bags, laundry stuff, towels, and who knows what else. It seems to be the default place for things we want upstairs but don't know where to put.

Now to the upstairs. There is a children's playroom which has shelves that hold all descriptions of toys, and an odd array of mismatched bookcases that look great for a kids room, Fortunately my children, currently 5, 7, and 9, all love to read, especially my 9 year of who finishes several books a week. The bedrooms each have between two to four bookcases as well, and wire shelving in the closets. When you walk room to room and add them up, there really are an amazing array of bookcases and shelves!