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After the third or fourth time we were kept up till 4am looking for a book whose exact location we were certain of, we decided that we needed a classification system for our library. We have always relied on the Organized Chaos or We Know Where Everything Is System, but admit it is not very efficient. Books tend to migrate all over the house: you take one out of its usual shelf to read in bed, it lands on your bedside stack, and when you tidy up your room in disgust it ends up on a different shelf.

Many libraries use the Dewey Decimal System to enforce order in their collections, but we’re not about to put numbers on the spines of all our books. In truth we didn’t figure out Dewey Decimals until recently, and we were a comparative lit major so lived in the library. We were a library assistant in high school—extracurricular requirement, since we didn’t want to join any clubs in freshman year—and we may have been the worst library assistant in history. Sample conversation:

Student: Do you have Cancer Ward by Solzhenitsyn?
Us: What?
Student: Cancer Ward.
Us: Corns of Art??
Student: Cancer Ward.
Us: What kind of a stupid title is Corns of Art?

Besides, 90 percent of our books are Fiction, so we would just be alphabetizing our library. True, arranging books in alphabetical order is an option, but we want to keep the current arrangement. So we thought up our own card catalogue system.

First, we assigned numbers to our bookshelves (See top photo). Then we found a couple of rectangular canisters (narrow cardboard boxes will do, too).

Then we cut little cards out of heavy paper (vellum board, and assorted folders lying around the house. Yay, recycling). Luckily the canisters were right for ATM/keycard/business card-sized pieces. We discovered that we can spend hours cutting straight lines with scissors on heavy paper. (Repetitive mindless tasks are very relaxing, but only if you do them by choice. The second someone orders you to do these same tasks, they’re terrible and soul-deadening.)

A cutting knife or a board cutter would’ve been more efficient, but we like kids’ scissors. The imperfect edges are charming.

Each card contains the author’s name, the title of the book, the type of edition (hardcover, trade, mass market paperback), and the number of the shelf the book lives in. Very simple.

We re-used the alphabetical markings from old file folders.

Voila. It’ll take us a few weeks to catalogue each book, probably more due to interruptions (“We forgot we had this!” Start reading. Cataloging is forgotten.)