A Shelf Life

On bookshelves, big feelings, and the joy of letting them overflow.

I have a lot of opinions about shelves. Which is funny, because for years I styled them like a magician pulling rabbits out of hats. One ceramic bird. One stack of vintage books. One impossibly small brass object I carried around in a tote bag like a lucky coin. I'd zhuzh. I'd edit. I’d reframe the story again and again until the shelf said something clever but not too clever. Like it had read The New Yorker, but hadn’t subscribed.

But somewhere along the way, I got tired. Maybe it was the tenth faux-diorama I built in one week, or the eleventh time I placed a tiny bowl next to a tiny sculpture next to a tiny candle and thought, This is a science fair project, not a shelf.

So I stopped trying to make shelves say something, and started asking them to hold something. Mainly, books.

My favorite shelves now? They're stuffed. Fully loaded. Books upon books, sometimes with no order at all. Some vertical, some horizontal, some threatening to tip over. A few bent. A few beautiful. The kind of shelves that make you want to pull something down and read, or at least sit close to them like they might start talking.

That’s the kind of home I want. One where the books are close enough to grab, not styled within an inch of their lives. One where a lamp leans in for conversation, or a sculpture anchors the bottom shelf like it knows what it’s doing. But that’s about it. A strong opinion, a single punctuation mark. The rest? Let it be books.

I’m not anti-object. I love objects. But when every shelf becomes its own little scene — one candle, one rock, one random photo of someone else’s grandparents — it starts to feel like the attic section of a very bad antique mall. And suddenly, you’re not in a home anymore. You’re in someone’s anxiety dream about what “curated” means.

The hardest thing to style is the mix. Half books, half stuff. It’s a tightrope. And when it’s off, you know. Each shelf looks like it's auditioning for a different movie.

So here’s my gentle advice: if you don’t have a meaningful collection yet, don’t fake one. Let the shelves be about books until they’re ready to be about something else. Or go the other way. All objects. Full commitment. No winks.

And if you’re building shelves from scratch — millwork, niches, the whole thing — wait until you know what’s going in them. Don’t build storage for a life you don’t live yet.

Because bookshelves, at their best, are more than storage. They’re autobiography. And when they’re honest, they don’t need a lot of extra styling. They just need time, and maybe a lamp with a little gravitas.

So stack your books. Let the dust settle a little. Let your shelves evolve like you do — messy, layered, unresolved in a way that’s still hopeful. Let them be overstuffed. Let them be too much. Let them remind you that life is still happening. That you still have more to read. That nothing is finished, not even this room.

And if someone tells you it looks chaotic, just smile and say, “It’s a system.”

(And then don’t explain it.)

Love,

Colin