Got Books? Get Bookends!

I love books; most of my clients love books; and many of you, my readers, love your books. So even though I wrote about bookends not all that long ago, I wanted to share my most recent discoveries — because these Yeti bookends from Sinki Industry were too wonderful not to share, right away. You can get them at MochiThings — or, if you read Korean, at 10x10. Both MochiThings and 10x10 also sell other Sinki bookends, including the Eiffel Tower and the cat.




NC Rustic sells a number of bookends made by Ironwood Industries, but these Zuni Fetish Bear bookends were the ones that first caught my eye. They're made from recycled sheets of steel.





Next, let's give thanks to Etsy for bringing us the bookends made by Lena and Dmitry of Design Atelier Article of Ukraine. The lemon and orange bookends are what first caught my eye, but the angel wings are pretty special, too.




And finally, here are some pretty amazing vintage roller skate bookends, sold by Uncommon Goods.

Related Posts:
Nice Bookends Don't Have to Cost $685
Treat Your Books to Some Nice Bookends: The Elephant Edition
Bookends for Those Who Haven't Totally Converted to the Kindle, Nook or iPad
5 Bodacious Bookends
For Book Lovers: Fun and Functional Bookends
A Bookend Menagerie — and More

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Weeding My Own Book Collection

We hold onto books we’ve already read, as trophies of our reading accomplishments. We hold onto books we might read in the future (but probably won’t), with the optimism that our future selves are going to be more amazing readers than we’ve ever been in the past.
— Leo Babauta, Zen Habits

Today I decluttered myself; I got rid of 27 books.

One went in the recycling bin because it was falling apart. Some others have been snapped up on Freecycle — even ones with yellow highlighting. (I read nonfiction with a highlighter close at hand.) Others will go to the used bookstore tomorrow.

What did I get rid of? Here's a partial list:

- The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Let's be real. If I ever want to read a Shakespearean play, I'm not going to want to pull out this heavy volume with its small print.

- Three books on designing usable web sites. They're good books, but I've already absorbed their lessons. I wouldn't go back to them for anything.

- Four books of history by Simon Schama. I'm glad I read these, but I can't foresee reading them again, or using them for reference. I've already incorporated key tidbits into my personal crib sheets on French and British history. Much better they go to the Freecycler who's so very excited to be getting them.

- Two books about the book business. These were fun, easy reads — but not something I'd pick up a second time.

- A book about cats. I love cats, but I don't love this book. It's on its way to a fellow cat lover.

- A book that's developed some bad associations. It might be a great book, but I really need it out of my home.

- Seven books I've had for years and never read, and still feel no great desire to read.

And now I have plenty of room on my bookshelves for the books I truly want to have — and even room to add some more. I also did some re-arranging, so the books I use the most are more accessible.

It feels really good.

Related Posts/Newsletters:
Loving Books and Letting Go
Is It Time to Bid Adieu to Some of Your Books?
3 Perspectives: Not All Books Are Keepers
Clearing Out the Bookshelves
Letting Go of (Some of) the Books

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A Bookend Menagerie — and More

Cats make terrible bookends. — Nora O'Neill, on The Bookshop Blog

Once you've decided which books are worth keeping, you'll want to look at good ways to store the keepers. Sometimes, that involves bookends.

And while cats don't make good bookends, cat-shaped bookends can work just fine, as Limor Yaron demonstrates. Although these bookends come from Israel, they're readily available to those of us living elsewhere through the wonders of Etsy.




Want some larger cats? Have a lot of money to spend on bookends? Here are some lion bookends from Fornasetti.




Prefer a different animal? Take a look at the Pulpo Stubborn Goat bookends, sold directly by Pulpo and on other sites, such as Occa-Home.




But perhaps you'd rather have a brontosaurus — or one of the many other wonderful bookends from Knob Creek Metal Arts.




And then there are the elephant bookends from Philippi, sold at a number of web sites (including Occa-Home).




Restoration Hardware has provided some wonderful bookends in the past — and continues to do so with these bunny bookends. [via Ink + Wit]




And of course, bookends don't have to feature animals. This bookend come from Goodwin + Goodwin in the U.K.; you can also get one that says The End in a similar script. You can find them at Bouf.

Related Posts:
Nice Bookends Don't Have to Cost $685
Treat Your Books to Some Nice Bookends: The Elephant Edition
Bookends for Those Who Haven't Totally Converted to the Kindle, Nook or iPad
5 Bodacious Bookends
For Book Lovers: Fun and Functional Bookends

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It's OK to Give Up on a Book

Photo by Alan Cleaver, found on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons

I once gave up on a book after the first page. My local bookstore had a book club, and I bought the next month's book without really looking at it. But when I got it home and started reading, I realized immediately that the author's style was not for me. Fortunately, I was able to return the book.

That's the fastest I've given up on a book — and I have no hesitation in doing so. I just gave up on one book, which might have interesting content, because the typeface was so bad that it was painful to read. But usually I give up when I'm just not enjoying the content of the book.

Want some encouragement to stop reading "bad books" — books that seem bad to you? Here's blogger David Pierce, in a short extract from his Five Rules for Life:

We do so many things that don’t add any value to our lives or anyone else’s, and those things get in the way of that which is actually worthwhile. My favorite example is reading a book — if it’s bad, we still tend to finish it just because we’ve already invested time in it. Why not cut our losses, stop reading, and spend that time reading a better book? Being a quitter is not a bad thing - it’s a smart thing.

And Leo Babauta of Zen Habits says this in his post on How to Read More:

Give up on a book if it’s boring. Reading isn’t something you do because it’s good for you — it’s not like taking your vitamins. You’re reading because it’s fun. So if a book isn’t fun, dump it. Give it a try for at least a chapter, but if you still don’t love it, move on.

Scott H Young has a whole blog post entitled Know When to Stop Reading a Book. He includes ideas on how to make it easier to give up on a book — including getting books from the library, so you've not spent any money. One of my favorite parts of his post was a comment he added:

The lost opportunity cost from not putting a book down is often forgotten. When you put down a book, you aren’t just giving up the chapters you didn’t read, you’re also gaining the chapters of some other book you did read. With a world filled with thousands of books, far more than you could ever read, I think that opportunity cost needs to be taken seriously.

Finally, Miss Manners answers an etiquette question:

Question: A friend has lent me a book about a subject that is of interest to me. I am halfway through the book (more than 200 pages so far) and find it not very well written. Would it be impolite of me not to finish the book? My feeling is that I must finish the book in order to be truthful in saying that I did indeed read it.

Answer: Your friend is not going to quiz you. You need only return the book with thanks and, if possible, mumble that it had a good point or two. If not, you can always say that it is interesting to know what is being said in the field.

Do you ever give up on a book? How far do you go before giving up?

Related Post:
Book Lovers: Stop Reading Books You Don't Like

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Organizing the Books, for Kids Who Read in Bed

Reading in bed is a pleasure for kids and adults alike — but how do you store the books your children are reading? Just today I came across two products designed to address this issue. The first is Tambino's clever combination of a bookshelf and a bed rail, also available through Etsy. Note: "Intended for kids over the age of two, who can get up and down from the bed unassisted. Not intended for the upper level of a bunkbed (upper bunk rails are longer)." [via Furniture Fashion]




But here's a product that is intended for use in the upper level of a bunkbed: the Tidy Books Bunk Bed Buddy, which holds books and assorted small items. Tidy Books also sells other neat products for organizing children's books, including the Tidy Box.

Related Post:
Storing and Displaying Children's Picture Books

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For Book Lovers: Fun and Functional Bookends

You've sorted through the books, moving along those that no longer fit your life. Now it's time to organize the remaining books on the bookshelves — which means you just might need some bookends.

The editor in me was pulled to the bookends shown above — one of eight designs available from Boxed. If you're a fan of the Keep Calm products, look for the ones with that theme. "U.S. customers will receive this product filled with beans, while for the other countries the bookend will be mailed empty. Fill it with 3 cups of dry beans, rice or even sand."




Robots S.P.A. provides us with these Giulietta e Roméo bookends, available from Made in Design and Panik.




Need a simple heavy-duty bookend? Take a look at the stainless steel bookends from Magmax, available at Canoe. The picture is a bit confusing, since the bookends would actually be turned around, with the metal plates under the books — but turning them this way shows them off properly. Each bookend weighs almost four pounds. As Canoe says, "The hefty construction and generous scale makes them highly suitable for holding oversized art and design books which ordinary bookends can't accommodate." [via Better Living Through Design]




Ideaco has some fun dual-purpose bookends: a combination of a bookend and a letter holder, or a tape dispenser. Some places to find these, outside of Japan, are MollaSpace and Emmo Home. [via Swiss Miss]




The Puhlmann Filemaker bookend allows you to easily label sections of books. The same company makes the Zoo brand bunny bookends. These are easy to find in The Netherlands — and harder to find elsewhere.




Finally, here's an interesting idea from Colleen & Eric: a shelf with a built-in bookend — which can be slid along the shelf, depending on how many books you need to hold up. The wood, color and size can all be customized to meet your needs. [via Bookshelf]

Related Posts:
Nice Bookends Don't Have to Cost $685
Treat Your Books to Some Nice Bookends: The Elephant Edition
Bookends for Those Who Haven't Totally Converted to the Kindle, Nook or iPad
5 Bodacious Bookends

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Purging the Book Collection: The Nonfiction Edition

I had no issue getting rid of my fiction paperbacks and most old school books years ago. My cookbooks and sewing/needlework & gardening books are another story. It's interesting that most "declutter the books" posts seem geared toward fiction. — comment from JustGail on my last book decluttering post

JustGail, that's an interesting observation! So let's focus on the nonfiction in this post. There's the obvious set of questions to ask yourself when going through those books, such as: Am I still interested in this type of cooking, gardening or crafting? Can I find similar information on the web if I ever want it? But I'm guessing you already know that, so I went looking for other people's perspectives, to see if I could find anything useful for you.

Over on Chowhound, there was a long Q &A with Mark Bittman, which included this exchange:

Scottbowling: Hi, Mark! Could you offer any suggestions for a home cook who wants to take his or her cooking up to the next level or branch out to different cuisines? What do you do when you're feeling adventurous in the kitchen?

Mark Bittman: You just keep cooking; you get new cookbooks and try new things and you try different versions of the same thing. Eventually, you give the cookbooks away. But that takes a while.

The Dairy Queen: Dear Mr. Bittman, wait, you say above "eventually you give the cookbooks away?" Don't you need to continue to refer to them for reference? How do you decide which books to keep and which to give away?

OMGTehAwsome: I'm no Mark Bittman, but I can answer #1. You give them away when you longer need them and feel comfortable enough that you can improvise if you have to. I used to follow the same recipe for focaccia word for word. After a while I'd just verify my quantities now and then, "was it a cup or a cup and a quarter?" At this point I just know it by heart, though I might still add a little extra rosemary. But I just like rosemary.

And here's just a tiny part of a wonderful long post by Adam Roberts, called The Great Cookbook Purge of 2009. Go read the whole post; it's delightful.

I lifted the first book: the Larousse Gastronomique. An enormous red tome, this is the French encyclopedia of gastronomy, filled with French cooking techniques and dishes and even recipes. But did I ever use it? NEVER. A big, all-caps NEVER. The few times I'd lifted it off the shelf to study it, I found myself flipping through the pages dutifully, but unenthusiastically. I'd never found anything I wanted to cook in there. And when, in the course of my cooking life, I came across a French cooking term or technique I needed to learn, I didn't turn to Larousse: I turned to the internet. So why did I need it? I didn't. And did I love it? The answer was no.

So I put it in a pile. And then I continued. Oh, how I continued. ...

It all comes down to trust. Do you use it, do you love it, but—most importantly—do you trust it? The ones that I kept are books that I trust absolutely.

Moving on to gardening, here's something from Amy Stewart of Garden Rant, who did a garden book purge after an earthquake dumped the books on the floor, which sort of jump-started the process. OK, she owns a bookstore, so it's not quite the same as for those of us who don't, but her words might still be helpful. After all, we can still find books at our local libraries — or someone else's bookstore.

I'm motivated to do a garden book purge in part because I need the bookshelf space, but in part because I just want to lighten my load psychologically. Because we own a bookstore, it's much easier for me to let go of books. I know that I can always get more if I need them. There's something about owning 50,000 books that are all neatly shelved and arranged at the store. It makes me feel like I can let go of some of the ones I have here.

What do I find myself keeping? Books that my friends wrote. Books with beautiful pictures. A few indispensable reference books. But that's it. The rest of it can go.

And here's a post from Julia about purging a number of things, including a stack of knitting books. The whole post is interesting; this is just a short part of it.

Part of this was just being pragmatic: paring down books that basically repeated information I have in other, more frequently used books. Some had patterns I once thought I’d make but no longer fancied – and, in some cases, couldn’t imagine why on earth I thought that was a good look in the first place. Others had patterns I still thought I might one day make if I met someone who could perhaps kind of get away with wearing that sweater.

But if it hadn’t happened in five or ten years, I think I can accept that it probably wasn’t going to happen. So if you’ve been holding your breath, waiting for the color block cardigan with removable zippered sleeves, I’m sorry.

I also realized that I acquired a number of these books at a time when there weren’t so many knitting websites around. Now I can get a lot of these patterns – or similar ones – online. Or I can check the books out of the library. In other words, let the public library and the internet house the clutter. It’s outta here!

Finally, for more on the subject, you might look at these prior posts:
Decluttering the Cookbooks
Books: Weeding the Collection

[photo by ulle.b, licensed under Creative Commons]

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Loving Books and Letting Go

T-shirt sold by Politics and Prose Bookstore

I love books. Most of my clients love books. And none of us will ever have time to read all the books we'd like to read.

But thanks to Discardia, I just read a wonderful article by Linda Holmes about coming to peace with this: with the fact that you're going to miss the "vast majority of the world's books, music, films, television and art." Here's a short quote, but I highly recommend reading the whole thing:

Culling is the choosing you do for yourself. It's the sorting of what's worth your time and what's not worth your time. ... It's saying, "I read the last Jonathan Franzen book and fell asleep six times, so I'm not going to read this one."

Surrender, on the other hand, is the realization that you do not have time for everything that would be worth the time you invested in it if you had the time, and that this fact doesn't have to threaten your sense that you are well-read. Surrender is the moment when you say, "I bet every single one of those 1,000 books I'm supposed to read before I die is very, very good, but I cannot read them all, and they will have to go on the list of things I didn't get to."

(And yes, I recognize there is something ironic about telling you to go read an article about not having time to read everything.)

Want more reassurance it's OK to not read everything - even everything good? Beth Carswell wrote about books that tend to "languish unopened" in her collection, including the classics:

I feel like I should read everything ever written by Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, D.H. Lawrence, Jane Austen, Victor Hugo … I feel like I should forgo all chocolate and alcohol in favour of vegetables, too. And floss more. Constant flossing. I should be flossing right now. Things rarely work out that exact way.

Related Reading:
Letting Go of (Some of) the Books (my May 2010 newsletter)

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5 Bodacious Bookends

Books play a big part in many of our homes - which is why I alternate between providing advice on how to dispose of those you no longer need, and providing information on how to store the keepers.

For now, let's look at those keepers - and some bookends that might help. The balloon dog bookends were designed by Imm Living and are sold by Park Life, among others. They are also the subject of a legal controversy involving Jeff Kooms, as explained in The Bay Citizen. The bookend is made of cast resin and weighd 6 pounds; it's available in perkwinkle and orange.




These stacked brick bookends come from Gluekit; they are also sold by Supermarket, where I first found them.




Those of us who grew up reading Nancy Drew books might like these Nancy Drew Silhouette Bookends.




If you want bookends with a lot of heft - and you don't mind spending a lot of money - you can get these mid-century solid steel rail track bookends. Update on June 8, 2011: The site that was selling these no longer carries them, although I found what looks to be the same thing on an auction site. But you can find other railway steel bookends at Rail Yard Studios and History Company.




And finally, take a look at these reclaimed stiletto bookends!

Related Posts:
Nice Bookends Don't Have to Cost $685
Treat Your Books to Some Nice Bookends: The Elephant Edition
Bookends for Those Who Haven't Totally Converted to the Kindle, Nook or iPad

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After You Declutter the Books: Donating vs. Selling - and Other Options

You've decided you're ready to part with some books - now what do you do with them? Green America does a great job of laying out the alternatives: sell, donate, swap or "set them free."

Here's a perspective from organizer Margaret Lukens (from an e-mail, quoted by permission):

For what it’s worth, my experience with Amazon has not been wonderful. They do everything right, but from my perspective, here’s what happens:

I list a dozen books, or a hundred, whatever.

After weeks or months, someone buys one.

I have 72 hours to drop everything else and correspond with the buyer and wrap and ship the book, for which I will get about $7 on average, unless it’s a paperback, in which case, it won’t buy a latte.

Meanwhile, I’ve still had the box of books to store.

Several weeks or months later, someone buys another.

It’s a heck of a way to earn $7! I’d rather donate them, get the tax benefit, and be done with it.

I'm with Margaret; for many of us, Amazon is too much effort for too little money. Of course, another alternative is selling to a bookstore dealing in used books - a local one, or an online one - as commenter Michelle notes on Unclutterer:

I had a great experience selling my books online to Powell’s. Just enter the ISBNs, they bid on the books they want to buy, and if you accept the bid they give you the shipping label. You get store credit in exchange, which is quite handy in my grad-student household.

Like most used-book stores, Powell’s will reject some titles on Tuesday but offer to buy them on Wednesday, so I checked back with them several times to see if they’d take any that they’d passed on the first time.

Other people are fans of various book-swapping sites - including Kirk McElhearn, who is especially fond of BookMooch. His whole essay is worth reading, but here's one little part:

What is especially interesting about BookMooch, compared with some of the other book trading services, is its international aspect: there are members from 44 countries, and this is increasing daily. For me in France, this is excellent: there are plenty of members in the EU, so I can swap without incurring overseas postage costs. ...

I’m mostly interested in finding homes for my books – the idea of throwing books away is anathema to me, but I’m fast running out of room. If I can give books away, and get other books in exchange, especially books that I’ve wanted to read, this is perfect.

One thing swappers say is that when getting books, be sure to filter out those that come from smoking homes, or those that are marked up, if these things matter to you. And be sure you know the condition; some people got books that were practically falling apart.

And then some people are extremely happy with Bookcrossing, where people register and label their books, give them away or "release them into the wild" - and then follow each book's journey as recipients log in to give updates. You can read the raves over on Lovemarks; here's part of what Corinne in the Netherlands had to say:

Bookcrossing has changed my life. That may sound dramatic, and while it isn't dramatic, it HAS changed my life. In my whole life I have never before met so many warm and generous people in just one year, in just one group, joined by just that one idea of sharing one's books.

Personally, I've sold books to a local bookstore, given them away on Freecycle, and donated them. Bookcrossing sounds intriguing, so I just may have to give that a try. Anyone want to share what YOU'VE done with the books you're done with?

Related Post:
10 Ways to Find New Homes for Your Books

[photo by anna_t of Stockholm, found on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons]

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Is It Time to Bid Adieu to Some of Your Books?

photo by sleepyneko / Eunice, found on Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons

A number of folks seem to be clearing off their bookshelves lately. If you want some inspiration to declutter your own bookshelves, their words might help.

Stuart Walton wrote an interesting piece entitled My book cull: a loss of shelf esteem. Here's a short excerpt from that:

What's the point of keeping most books once they've been read? They huddle together on the shelves and then, when shelf space runs out, they stand around in precarious columns on the floor, making fossil impressions on the carpet, doing nothing really more serious than bearing witness to what you've read in the past few decades. ...

There will always be books to which one wants to refer back again and again, but what of most of the novels, biographies of minor figures, the tidal wave of critical theory? The answer is: they can go. Having served their moment, they can be shown the door.

Walton was inspired by "moving house" - which often leads people to re-examine their book collections. Here's Michael Schaub writing on Bookslut about his recent move, and that of editor-in-chief Jessa Crispin:

Jessa and I both went through epic book purges fairly recently, when she moved to Berlin and I moved to Portland. I can't speak for her, but for me, it was emotionally painful for about five seconds. Then I realized how much it was going to cost to ship everything across the country, and it became much, much easier. I think I was actually gleefully threatening the books at one point. ("See you in hell, copy of Silas Marner that I'm never going to read! SEE YOU IN HELL!")

And this one's a bit older: About a year ago, Barbara Winter pointed me to The New York Times, which had asked some authors "what to cull and what to keep." Here are some of the points made by Francine Prose:

If a country, like Czechoslovakia, no longer exists, it’s unlikely that you’ll want to take the travel guide along with you when you go.

Ask yourself the following hard question and answer honestly: If I live to be 100, will I read this book again?

And I love the honesty and individuality in the answer provided by David Matthews, as he gets rid of what many would consider to be great literature. Here's just a part of his reply:

Marquez’s A Hundred Years of Solitude makes the scrap heap, because it would take precisely that combination of circumstances before I could be bothered to finish it. Bye, bye Jamaica Kincaid — assigned 20 years ago by a comparative lit professor — you will always be homework to me.

Related Posts:
Clearing Out the Bookshelves
3 Perspectives: Not All Books Are Keepers
Books: Weeding the Collection
Weeding the Books: Our Tastes, They Are A-Changin
10 Ways to Find New Homes for Your Books

Related Newsletter:
Letting Go of (Some of) the Books

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Bookends: Sometimes Simple Works Best

I've been doing some of my own decluttering - the continual weeding of the books. Getting rid of some 20-year-old travel books that I haven't opened in ages left me a nice space to display these cranes that a friend folded.

Of course, when I don't fill up a whole shelf with books, that means I need some bookends. And if I'm putting them next to decorative items, I want those bookends to be unobtrusive - but I still want them to be attractive. The bookend I'm using here comes from Blomus; you can get the Blomus bookends at Unica Home and other places.




Here's another example, with a vase - which I don't use as a vase. The bookends I've used here appear to be the Elements bookends from Spectrum Diversified. They come in two sizes, and are available in both chrome and black. I'm seeing them on Amazon.com.

Related Posts:
Nice Bookends Don't Have to Cost $685
Treat Your Books to Some Nice Bookends: The Elephant Edition
Bookends for Those Who Haven't Totally Converted to the Kindle, Nook or iPad

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Getting Organized with Svenskt Tenn

So right after I wrote a post about bookends, I found another pair that is begging to be shared: these alpha omega cast iron bookends, available in red and black. [Note: 1 U.S. dollar currently equals about 7.3 Swedish kroner.]

I must thank Alison Heath for this find; she got me looking into Josef Frank (the designer whose work inspired the July 15 Google doodle) and Svenskt Tenn, an interior design shop in Sweden. Svenskt Tenn "was founded in 1924 by Estrid Ericson, who recruited Josef Frank to the company 10 years later."




And Svenskt Tenn has a number of interesting products, beyond those bookends. For example, even though I rarely use a letter opener, I'm totally enchanted by this one.




This letter tray (or in box) doesn't have the cute factor going for it, but it's very nice, anyway.




If you have plenty of money to spend - or just like to window shop on the web - take a look at Svenskt Tenn's cabinets, including this chest of drawers. We're all too late to get the limited edition Flora chest of drawers, which is amazing.




And finally, while it's pushing it a bit to call a tray an organizing product, I just had to include one because I love the fanciful patterns.

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Bookends for Those Who Haven't Totally Converted to the Kindle, Nook or iPad

Back in December 2008, I lamented the fact that Restoration Hardware's typewriter bookends were no longer available. Well, now I'm pleased to see that they're back! Update on January 11, 2012: Sadly, they're no longer shown on the restoration Hardware web site.




But I'm also very taken with Restoration Hardware's vise bookends.




Of course, plenty of other places sell notable bookends. If you like the typewriter, maybe you'll also like these Quote-Unquote bookends.




Architectural Pottery makes these XOO bookends. [via EcoSalon]




Susan Bradley's London Transport bookends are a fun option. You can buy directly from her, or from the London Transport museum (bus and taxi). [via Retro To Go]




These iron fleur-de-lis bookends (available here and here) look quite nice.




And finally, these Swirly Whirly bookends are available from Roussell Family Arts, over on Etsy.

Related Posts:
Nice Bookends Don't Have to Cost $685
Treat Your Books to Some Nice Bookends: The Elephant Edition

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May 2010 Organizing Tips and More

My May 2010 newsletter is now available.

Tip of the Month: Letting Go of (Some of) the Books




Organizing Product of the Month: Slim shelving

Also included: Organizing Statistic of the Month and some Twitter tidbits

Related Posts:
Clearing Out the Bookshelves
3 Perspectives: Not All Books Are Keepers
Books: Weeding the Collection

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Reader Question: Organising products for those of us in Australia?

Since this blog has a worldwide audience, I try to include products from as many places as I can. But I know that the majority of the products I list come from the USA or the U.K. - so here's a post focused specifically on products that my Australian readers can find more easily.

Let's start small, and then move on to larger items. Little Jane St has ceramic magnets on 12 different designs. I'm partial to the ampersand, myself, but I know people who would probably go for the cupcakes. [via Bloesem]




Intrigued by all the Keep Calm and Carry On products? You can get these magnets (and magnets with many other designs) from Iszle.




And The Rabbit and The Duck is one more place to get some magnets. Update on Sept. 6, 2010: It seems this Etsy shop no longer sells magnets.




Organisers tend to prefer staples to paper clips, but I can see uses for this giant paper clip - and besides, it's darling. (Could the fairy be holding the Organising Magic Wand that we all wish existed?)




Stepping up in size, we come to these lovely bookends, sold by Reader's Niche. They come in three different colors.




Sasha Sews has fabric baskets and other organising items.




Ute Australian Design has a number of storage products, including this magazine rack; another neat product is the CD storage unit. [vie Indie art and design]




And moving on to larger items, Daire Timber Products provides "100% Australian made solid timber" CD and DVD racks of various sizes. It's a family-owned and operated business, too.




Wildwood Designs makes a range of furniture, including bookcases and related items, such as this wine rack.



And finally, Bugendore Wood Works Gallery has some lovely cabinets from various furniture makers.

Related Posts:
Awesome Products from Australia; see KikkiK and OZ Design Furniture
French Storage Tins, with an Australian vendor
Soft Storage: Felt Baskets or Boxes; scroll down to the last one
12 More Options for Colorful Storage, with Wilkens and Kent furniture
Seven Ways to Store the Wine, with another Wilkens and Kent product
11 Alluring Laundry Bags - see #10
Two Cool Chalkboards; see French Bazaar, an Australian company
The Definitive Guide: 15 Ways to Store the Shoes - see #3
Bedroom Elegance: The Clothes Valet Stand; see the last one
New on My Bookshelf: Sorted, the book by Australian organiser Lissanne Oliver

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