Bedside Bookshelf

Last week Jessamyn at librarian.net shared a couple of links to some pretty amazing bookshelf designs, which reminded me that I had yet to post pictures of the tiny project that I did a couple of months ago.

Before I made this bookshelf, I just had a pile of books and magazines rattling around near the bed and making a mess. Also, the only reading light was on the other side of the room, and would sometimes get rudely turned off while I was in the middle of reading a sentence.

Instead of getting a night stand, a lamp, and some sort of book organizer, I decided to try to build something that could handle things more simply. This bookshelf might not be one of the 30 most creative bookshelf designs, but it certainly meets my needs and was built with the materials at hand.

Actually, other than the push-button switch, the bookshelf is comprised entirely of salvaged and reused materials, as follows:

• lamp parts from the decommissioned flower lamp
• small squares of wood that were hanging around the lab
• a long piece of plywood I found jogging through the neighborhood alleys
• long screws that were rattling around my old boss's truck bed
• a chinese takeout soup container
• leftover paint from doing my office walls

The design was inspired a bit by the Sapien Bookcase that I saw across the street in Design Within reach. I was tempted to buy it when I saw it, but decided to save $216 by building something comparable myself.

The vertical orientation allows for a bit more random access than a traditional horizontal bookshelf, where all the books usually keel over whenever you remove one of them. I decided to segregate the books by size, cutting the shelves to the precise dimensions of the four common formats: magazines, hardcovers, trade paperbacks, and paperbacks.

I was toying with the idea of incorporating holders to accommodate a glass of water, my glasses, and my cellphone but decided that keeping the design simple might be better in the long run.