I was convinced Dewey decimal style numbering was too rigid for my fiction shelf, so last month I switched to grouping by how the covers looked together. It looked great in photos but I could never find anything, especially when I had three different editions of the same series scattered across two shelves. After hunting for a specific Le Guin paperback for 20 minutes one night, I reorganized everything back to author last name in about an hour. Anyone else tried color coding or vibe based arranging and then had to backtrack once real use started?
Last month this guy came over to borrow a drill and saw my alphabetical fiction shelf. He just started pulling books out and lining them up by cover color without asking. He said my system was boring and that rainbow order helps you rediscover books you forgot you owned. I stood there watching him rebuild 47 books in about ten minutes. Now I catch myself eyeing my own shelf and wondering if he had a point, has anyone else had a visitor mess with their setup and actually kind of improve it?