I live in a very small apartment and have 5 bookshelves of books and it looks bad. Ideas?

Who cares.. look at all the beautiful books you read...YOU are amazing person... Will you read to me... ???? Keep up the reading.. read all you can.. you will be a happy man...

I love books too, I have alot of them. Try putting them in categories. I have my cookbooks in the kitchen, my reference books in the dining room (built in bookcase), my self-help books in my bedroom in square boxes, children's books in their rooms. I realize with a small apartment this might not be a solution for you. I would then paint all the bookcases the same color and maybe buy some matching trim and attach to the bookcases. Hope this helps

donate the ones you can spare to your local hospital or old folks home they really appreciate the reading material once you have purged down go with 2-3 shelves get rid of the old school books as they will probably be out dated anyway...hard to let books go i know i am a reader too.....

try cutting them shorter,then join and convert to a bed open from atleast three sides so that you can take out books. you may even hang curtains to give continuity as wall

Simple. Add doors. You can make them to fit yourself. take measuremants. Go to Home depot or Lowes or whatever you have near of that type store. Buy tongue and groove boards.The people there will help you figure out how much you need, and even cut them to the correct sizes for you. Then glue them together, sand and paint or varnish and hang. You dont have to give up any books or look at them except when you want to.

when i lived in a small place, i got a very sturdy box, filled it with the least used books, covered it with a throw, and used it as a coffee table. different sized boxes can double up as bedside table etc

u just remove some unwanted books. then u try to organize them according to the name. then it looks nice.

If possible, hang some shelves around the top of your rooms. In my old place we did that with shelf brackets and some 1x6's. Not a hard job or very expensive. I ran mine along the top of the window sill around the room and used it for kick-knacks and books. Worked great for us. Hope this helps.

First thing is to declutter alot of the unused,unwanted,and unloved books. Give them to charity and get the reciept for a tax deduction. If you prefer not to do this then might I suggest still decluttering some of those books and what-nots and repainting the bookshelves a solid color so that they coordinate together. Then place along a wall from the shortest to the tallest if this is possible. The more you can unclutter the better so the whole project takes on a whole new look. If these are a permenant fixture to your aparment then I also suggest taking up this problem with the landlord to see if it would be okay to have them tear out the bookshelves. Otherwise you may be looking at them for awhile longer until your lease is finished.