A number of people have commented over the years on how neat I keep my desk and the library.  I know some of them chalk it up to the fact that I'm a librarian.  In reality, that is the only way I can function at work and I think it has very little to do with the librarian thing.  

At home, my "office" is a mess.  Right now I have a messy stack of sticky notes on my desk, a pile of articles on the floor, a stack of papers on one end of my couch, as box of papers I need to sort through on the floor in front of the couch, and a box full of ceramics that I took off the top of a bookcase that I have moved.  Someday, I will get through all of this and have a neat office.  Maybe.

The subject of this post is supposed to be about organizing books, so I guess I should move on to that.  I know librarians and non-librarians who are very particular about the organization of their personal book, CD, and/or DVD collections.  My husband is responsible for our DVDs and they are all arranged alphabetically by title.  Same with his CDs, video games, and everything else he has.  I know other people who obsessively organize their books either by topic, author, color, size or some other means.  That is so not me!  

My books are roughly grouped by topic.  Beyond that, I can't say much.  If I pull a book off the shelf to use it, i may or may not get put back somewhere close to where it was.  I've thought about this dichotomy in the past and I think I know the cause.  Work is stressful.  Work is work.  Outside of work, I just want to relax and not have to worry about where stuff it.  So I don't.  

How do you organize your books and other collections?