Q&A: What kind of bookshelves do you use?
QUESTION: Bookshelves are expensive and heavy. What do you use?
ANSWER: For the past five years I've been using these beige plastic utility shelves, which I get for about $40 at Home Depot. I've also seen them at other retailers.
These babies are cheap and durable, and hold a tremendous amount of weight. I use each shelf as a bookshelf, and also use the back side to hold another row of books facing the opposite way. I also put books on the top shelf steadied by bookends -- or I'll put boxes of books up there I've got in long-term storage.
These shelves assemble pretty quickly, what you see here goes together in five minutes. When we moved last summer, it was pretty easy to knock them down and reassemble them at our new place.
The product description says these hold 250 pounds, but I've had over 600 pounds on these things with no problems. The set of shelves itself only weighs about 15 or 20 pounds.
These shelves come in two sizes -- 18-inch depth and 12-inch depth. I use the 18-inch depth so I can shelve books on the front and back, with room for about 250 hardbacks. Then I put a removable sticker on the spine of each book with my SKU on it.
You can buy these on Home Depot's Web site but the shipping is about $25, which isn't good. I'm sure most people could find these locally. Here's the part number for Home Depot:
Internet/Catalog #100010588
Store In-Stock SKU # 625961
Store Special Order SKU # 423623
posted by Steve Weber at 8/17/2006
13 Comments:
Thanks Steve for both this post and the one before it on removing stickers from books. As a new Amazon seller, this is the kind of nitty gritty advice that I find the most useful. Once I sell a few more books I may even be able to afford to buy your Home Based Book Store book...
Steve,
I was a bit worried about you, overloading those shelves. The good news is that the HD web site states the load capacity is 750 lbs., or 150 lbs. per shelf. So stack away!
dd
No wonder they have't fallen over yet! Must get more books...
What kind of bookshelves do I use? I don't. I keep my books in 10 gallon or similar plastic storage crates. My favorite size and shape has been discontinued, but this is much simpler than shelves. And, books stay cleaner and are protected from cats and anything else.
I don't have time or energy for stickers with SKUs on the spine. I SKU by crate. So a typical SKU might be 29-080706-23, meaning the book was listed on 8/7/06, stored in crate 29 and was the 23 book listed that day. It's worked great for the past three years. No need for stickers on the spine; the book is in the crate.
Once a year or so I do an inventory to make sure things are where they are supposed to be, and they usually are.
I tried shelf storage, but it is too cumbersome and the books get too dirty. I do use one bookshelf for some CD boxes and a few oversize items.
That's my system...
Who have you found has the best price on those 10-gallon crates? I see them all over, but until today haven't considered buying any. Thanks.
I agree with the plastic bins, its worked great for me. I buy these online from Walmart, for good prices.
Question for those of you who use the plastic bins. Do you stack them or just lay out on the floor? If you stack them, how often do you find you have to move them to get at your inventory?
Thanks!
We sometimes use bins to store pre-listed material (aka fresh meat), and what we call Advanced Listing, meaning it will go on eBay instead of Amazon. But, having a hard time imagining using them for the thousands (and intended to be tens of thousands) of items in inventory. How big is your inventory?? Are you just storing a few hundred? And, stacking would be a pain, but non-stacking would be too inefficient. And, to fill the dozens of daily orders would mean a lot of unloading and reloading of bins... sounds like alot of extra work for an operation of any size. How big is your inventory?
Great info on those shelves! I use plastic bins like others have mentioned, but I have an inventory of less than 300 books. They have been great since I've relocated several times this past year, as the bins keep the books well protected. One good run of duct tape around the lid will keep the top on, which is very handy while you are moving!
Even with such a small inventory, I will say that those plastic bins get HEAVY. I use two types and the larger one must weight 80-90 pounds when it's full. And it can be hard to find your books quickly which does cost you time and money, but you can cheat and use a see-through container and stack the books with the spines facing outward so you can see the titles.
I'm looking into using shelves as my inventory expands, but I think for my very rare and expensive books, I will continue to keep them in containers where they will be safer. :)
I've got a question about those shelves. How do you set them up so that the books don't fall off the open ends? They look like the don't have sides. Do you use book ends or something else?
And thanks for all the great advice in your blog. :)
Julie,
Yeah that part is a bit tricky. I basically stablize it by bracing the end book against the post that supports the next shelf up. Sometimes to do a good job, the book has to be pulled forward (meaning the spine is facing up or down instead of toward the front. That gives you more surface area on the side of the book to help hold up the books toward the inside. It helps to use a big hardcover on the end.
As the books on the shelf sell and they're not all packed together, I lean them all to one side, so gravitity supports them.
Thanks, that makes sense. I've used book ends before, but when there's less books on the shelves they tip and fall.
I may experiment with one of those shelves, maybe a piece of heavey cardboard or a board slipped on the inside of the poles would work as well.
I use plastic bins, but I built shelves to store the bins on. That way they are not stacked on top of each other. I have been quite pleased with this method as it keeps the books clean and free of dust, bugs, etc.
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