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It's New Year's Day, which is time to clean and organize. I've taken all 125 of my cookbooks off their shelves, and I'm trying to decide how to reorganize. In the past, I've had them sorted by regional cooking, baking, reference books, etc.  As I have some limited space upstairs, less used books are on a shelf in the basement. I'm toying with alphabetically (by author), mostly so my husband will know where to put the book back. 

Wondering how other people organize their physical books? What seems most useful?

Thanks, and Happy New Year! Here's to more cookbooks and more cooking!

*Edit* 

Thank you all for your thoughts! I like the idea of keeping the baking books together. I will play with other ideas to see what works. The more I rearrange, the more I can't find what I'm looking for! Good thing I only have 125 books.

Personally, I like having them just alphabetized by Title. This way I can match them up to my list on EYB and make sure they're all accounted for. LOL. I guess I don't really have multiple books by one author where it might be helpful to have those shelved together. Of course, I guess your EYB list could also be sorted by author--I just haven't done that before.

Most of books are regional/international, so they’re arranged geographically. So an English cook book goes at the top left. My top book shelf continues through Northern Europe, Russia and Central Asia, to China/Japan/Korea, and followed by Canada/US/Mexico. Beneath Canada/US/Mexico are the Caribbean cookbooks. The lowest shelf has South America. I have a smaller bookshelf for more general cookbooks. The real issue is that I have so many more cookbooks for the mid-latitudes that things don’t always link properly between shelves, but it’s still very easy to find things by region. Before I had so many international cookbooks, I mostly organized by color as I normally remember colors more than titles.

I sort mine by region, and then by size. There are a couple of exceptions - All the fermentation, preserving and pressure cooking books are together, Ottolenghi's foodie family books are together, and Nigel Slater's are together. Ottolenghi's and Slater's are not big exceptions as they are in the area of "general" cookbooks from the UK.

Sometimes authors get split eg Hetty McKinnon. Community is in the Australian section and To Asia, Tenderheart and Linger are in the Asian/Asian-ish section.

I have had the style of sorting for decades, despite living in different parts of Australia at times, so I tend to have "muscle memory" of where particular books are. It works well for me. 

With more than 3,500 cookbooks I have to have a system otherwise I would never be able to find a book. What works for me is by subject apart from the authors I have every book by (Nigella, Jamie, Nigel, Ottolenghi, Dorie, Melissa, Diana) as I keep all their books together. The subjects are regional, restaurants, general, vegetarian/vegan, baking & desserts (with each type together), ingredient (meat/fish/eggs/spices etc), preserving, seasonal, salads, soups, cocktails, reference. My main conflict is whether a regional book on a subject belongs in the subject or the country e.g. is Italian soups in Italy or soups and is Swedish cookies in baking or Sweden? I go for subject over region for those.

I'm moving house later this month and having to put most of my cookbooks in storage as I'm renting for a while. So I'm taking the opportunity while boxing up my books to prune my collection and also do an audit of my EYB Bookshelf, which over the 16 years I've had it has some books missing and books I no longer own still listed. The movers are going to have a shock when they see how many book boxes I have! My dream for my next (and final!) house is to have a room big enough to store all my cookbooks in one place, which has never been the case up until now.

I'm kind of in Jane's camp.

With 1,642 cookbooks it becomes difficult to have a consistent filing system. Particularly when there is not enough room for them to be organized in one place.

I have books on shelves, books in boxes, and books on what I call "The Stack" (300+). The boxes are numbered. The shelves and stack are roughly ordered by region. But region is dicey.

The challenge being the author. Take Jamie Oliver for example. I have 23 of his cookbooks and he has cooked from all over the world, never mind his 1, 5, and 7 ingredients, or his 15 and 30 minute cookbooks. I don't think there is one of his cookbooks I would file in the region of Britian/British. Maybe Naked Chef since it's his first cookbook.

I have all of the cookbooks inventoried in EYB as well as a local spreadsheet. I use the bookmarks in EYB to track which shelf, stack, or box they are in. In the spreadsheet I have a list to track where and how the boxes are stacked together so I can track down a cookbook. But I'll tell you.....if the book is in a box the second row back from the front, and the second box down from the top, it had better be a compelling recipe.

I also have a portion of the stack where the more popular EYB cookbooks are. I base this on the frequency and number of notes, as well as the number of bookshelves they are on.

In the end there is no ideal system for ordering your cookbooks. The key is a good set of bookmarks, and a spreadsheet to cross-reference and determine where the cookbooks are.

Here's an example of the bookmark I use: 

5 - Stack
7 - Shelf
7 - Shelf - Asia/Thai/Vietnamese
7 - Shelf - Baking
7 - Shelf - Barbara Kafka
7 - Shelf - Barefoot Contessa
7 - Shelf - BBQ
7 - Shelf - Biba Caggiano
7 - Shelf - Bobby Flay
7 - Shelf - Chinese
7 - Shelf - Hawaiian
7 - Shelf - Healthy
7 - Shelf - Indian
7 - Shelf - Italian
7 - Shelf - Jacques Pépin
7 - Shelf - Jamie Oliver
7 - Shelf - Jeff Smith
7 - Shelf - Julia Child
7 - Shelf - Large Format Books
7 - Shelf - Lidia Bastianich
7 - Shelf - LLC
7 - Shelf - Martin Yan
7 - Shelf - Mary Ann Esposito
7 - Shelf - Mexican
7 - Shelf - Michael Chiarello
7 - Shelf - Paul Prudhomme
7 - Shelf - Rick Bayless
7 - Shelf - Seafood
7 - Shelf - South America/Caribbean
7 - Shelf - Southern
7 - Shelf - Southwest
7 - Shelf - Spain/Portugal
7 - Shelf - Tyler Florence
7 - Shelf - Vegetarian
7 - Shelf - Washington State
7 - Shelf - Woman's Day
9 - Box 200
9 - Box 210
9 - Box 220
9 - Box 230
9 - Box 240
9 - Box 250
9 - Box 260
9 - Box 270
9 - Box 280
9 - Box 290
9 - Box 300
9 - Box 310
9 - Box 320
9 - Box 330
9 - Box 340
9 - Box 350
9 - Box 360
9 - Box 370
9 - Box 380

I seem to have gone on a cookbook thrifting binge the last year or so and now I'm at over 300 in my collection.  Most are shelved (in my office) alphabetically by title, since that's the way they come up when I'm searching EYB for recipes.  One exception is my baking books, which are shelved separately--when I'm in the mood to bake, I generally pull multiple books and start looking at muffin recipes or cookie recipes or pie recipes, and it's convenient to have them all on one shelf. The other exception is my collection of vintage cookbooks (1930s through 1950s) that are also shelved separately. I also keep a small selection of the books I use most often on a small bookshelf in my kitchen. So far, this informal system seems to work.

I arrange mine by color of bindings in a rainbow order with white, beige, grey and black at the end.  Looks nice but is totally illogical in terms of finding like next to like.  I take the jackets off the old ones so I have a few really boring bindings, mostly beige and gray.  I reduced my collection by 2/3rd in 2025. With a couple of exceptions  if i hadn't used them in the last year they went to the library for their yearly sale. The reduction allowed me to have room for some new ones and refreshed my cooking style.  I keep my baking books on separate shelves from the others.  Good thing I don't have 3500 cookbooks.  

Any regrets on the purge?  Only Keller's Ad Hoc at Home.  Went to make potate pave and no recipe.  

Compared to the systems already described, this sounds terribly boring, but I recently reoganised mine to alphabetical by author's surname. We are going a new kitchen extension in the next year or so, and I'm looking forward to having a dedicated space just for cookbooks. 

I have about the same number as you, 125, and I try to keep it to that number for physical books.  We have a large china hutch (referred to by our dorky family as Jabba the Hutch) :) which was a hand-me-down from my husband's great-aunt, and where most people would keep china and crystal, we have cookbooks.  :) It's in our combined kitchen/dining room, so I keep the "everyday" books there. My husband has his own cookbook collection, so he has a couple of shelves and I have a couple of shelves: cookbooks are the one thing we haven't merged in our 27 year marriage.  :) Joint financial accounts, linens, small appliances, all that stuff is combined, but we have different tastes in cookbooks and like to keep them separate. On the same hutch, of course.  :) 

In the living room, which is just one room over, I keep the baking books separate, and also a separate shelf for the international books.  I've separated these out because if I want to bake, or if I want to make something from a particular international cuisine, then I like to have all those books together with the similar ones so that I can browse through and decide which, say, posole recipe or brownie recipe I want.  I definitely use the international ones for regular weeknight cooking too, but since they usually involve some in-advance planning for grocery shopping, I have them separate from the "every day books" that probably align with stuff in our pantry in fridge, and that are therefore in the dining/kitchen for me to just grab when I get home from work and need to throw something together.  Hope that makes sense.  :)

I have been pondering the same question. I have way too many physical books and no matter how i try, i can't seem to keep track of things.  

I think the best system is by technique and by region.

the problem lies with the books that fall into multiple catagories and those that fall in no catagory.

So i have books by techinque on one set of book shelves and those by region on another set.  I have single subject books like soups, cocktails, garden books, memoirs  etc in another area. This only works if you have a large space.  

Books that are by famous writers such as Ina Garten and compendiums give me a lot of headaches because they don't really work for any of these catagories. But i do try to work all my American authors into the regional section and all the compendiums in to the single subject section. 

I just went through my books, about 650, and added location tags in EYB. They are done by room and shelf number. I have them sorted by category: baking, preserving, bread, etc, but also by size and author in some locations. I took photographs of my bookshelves and went through these on CYA, adding tags as well as updating books that were not in the database. I've still got about 12 to locate, but overall I'm very pleased. I may do a little thinning out now that I've gone through them, and then re-organize where some are located, but now I know where to find them!

Pretty much random! Although some related books are shelved toegether. For example, all the books that accompany The Great British Bake Off are on the same shelf. Most books by GBBO contestants are on a second shelf but that has now run out of room so there is now a third shelf for that type of book. Books by the same author such as Kwoklyn Wan for Chinese or Judy Joo (and others) for Korean are shelved togerher however not the same shelves or even the same bookcase. Big books such as Ferrandi's French Patisserie or Melanie Dupois' Patisserie: Master the Art of Frnech Pastry are on either the bottom shelf or the middle shelves of IKEA Billy bookcases in my study. All the River Cottage Handbooks (currently 19 are on shelved together) but other RIver Cottage recipe books are distributed around the house.

All in all random really. I just know where everything is.

Oh yes, others are in Apple Books shared between my Macs, iPad, and iPhone. 

With 210 books on my EYB shelf plus a few other titles, I would describe my system as "organized randomness".  I keep my dedicated baking books & my canning/preserving books together in 2 specific spots all the time but otherwise I try to keep titles by a specific author together (Ina, HBH, JO etc) AND I "try" to keep any themes together (ie all the Mexican focussed books).  I have 2 bookcases that stand at either end of the kitchen/dining table + a shelf underneath our dedicated bar and a few older/classic books on a shelf in the living room.  I move things around to be sure authors stay together and honestly...I have little to no trouble remembering where specific books are...and if I'm wrong, doesn't take long to find them.

1. One shelf of "frequently used favorites" in kitchen, alphabetical by author: mostly vegetarian / vegan / pescatarian, a few international, a few general, etc.

2. One shelf of vegetarian / vegan / vegetables in bookshelf, alphabetical by author.

3. Partial shelf of general / basics in bookshelf, alphabetical by author. 

4. Partial shelf of international (alphabetical by country)/ regional (alphabetical by area) in bookshelf, alphabetical by author within each subsection.

5. Partial shelf of baking / pastas / salads / soups in bookshelf, alphabetical by author (several soup & bread)

6. Partial shelf of proteins (fish / chicken) in bookshelf, alphabetical by author.

7. Kindle - utter chaos, as sort by author and subfolders are not options. If I'm looking for a specific title, I search by keywords from title or author's name (which can require choising from a short list). Books are organized in alphabetically organized folders. To facilitate browsing, a single cookbook may be included in multiple folders. Cookbooks are organized by "Cookbooks-" followed by Basics, General, International & Regions (multiple folders, e.g. French, Italian, California, etc.), Type (again multiple folders, e.g. Bread, Casseroles-Soups-Stews, Proteins, Veg (Vegetarian / Vegan / Vegetables), etc.), Gadgets (slow cooker, etc.), Restaurants (includes celebrity chefs, bloggers, etc)., Memoirs, and folders for extended series such as ATK. There are also folders for a simple count of all cookbooks, and another for all EYB books.

Other folders are for library books (currently checked out and previously checked out), and for various fiction and non-fiction genres, but that goes beyond this reply.

Hello!

Interesting topic! I have organized as follows (to keep in mind that I am French but have lived in the UK for 13 years and elsewhere) :

- French cooking

- English cooking

- International cooking

- Magazines ordered by title and by month so I can find easily recipes that are in season

I have about half as many books as you do though :)

Agnès

Organized by topic, mostly. All Bread books, Pie books, cookie books, bean books, soup books, slow cooker books, etc and then general all purpose cookbooks. 

I generally sort by region ie French, Indian. Mediterranean,  middle eastern etc then another section on food types ie bread, baking, vegetarian, fish, salads etc Another section on chefs ie Rick Stein, Elizabeth Daviid, David Tanis l, Ottolenghi etc. Then a specific section for my Phiadon collection.

Seems to work for me.