How to Hang Books Without Shelves in Your Classroom, Office, or Home

All puns intended when we say "props" to Amber at DefrumpMe!

When it comes to the classroom, parents, teachers, and kids all know what it’s like to struggle for space for books, notebooks, backpacks, lunches, and all the stuff kids have to take to school nowadays that they didn’t in the past. In the days of yore, a number two pencil, a comp book, and a good head on your shoulders was all it took to get that scholarship to Cornell and the corner office. Now kids have to lug texts, laptops or tablets, all manner of whacky calculators, and parents are given bizarre lists of things to buy for that first day of school. You’ll never convince us that pink metallic glitter glue is essential for little Betty’s homework or her subsequent success at Cornell, but that’s another matter.

At least there’s one thing you can do as a teacher or parent—and that’s keep books in order—even when you have very little space. This L-bracket invisible bookcase is a great hanging system for classrooms, offices, or small houses and apartments in which literary lovers live (with alliteration, naturally.) So how does this work? Physics, dear Watson, physics (that’s a mixed bag of literary and scientific commentary for your pleasure.)

So fresh and so clean. Also, as stated in this blog, it's all the jazz.

By simply affixing an L-bracket to the wall, you will have created a way to use a hardcover book as the base of a shelf. Now, this will mean that all other books that go on top of this book will need to be the same size or smaller, but they don’t necessarily have to be lighter. So you can add several other hardcovers or paperback books on top, though for the purposes of safety in the classroom or office, we’d recommend no more than five.

But how do you keep the bottom cover of the bottom book from hanging down? Great question, thank you for raising your hand. Almost every book has a blank page or two in the back. Simply hot glue the edges of the very last page to the back of the book. This way, you can slide it in and out of the L-bracket, the book remains intact, and no knowledge was destroyed in the making of this shelf.

If you plan on keeping your Merriam Webster’s Third Edition up here, you can just hold the phone pal, because this is not gonna cut mustard for that. Though if you need to know what it means to “cut mustard,” you can easily use this invisible L-bracket bookcase to “hang” your Dictionary of Idioms on top of.

For safety again, we recommend an L-bracket with a hinge—this way, when you remove the books, you can just fold that bad boy up against the wall and avoid head traumas, which by and large are no fun. Speaking of traumas, to stave off injuries to the lower extremities, we also highly recommend using screw anchors. Books are heavy—you just said you were a teacher, you should really know that.

Teachers: Use this DIY bookshelf technique to create mini book shelving areas for each child. You can add cute banners with students’ names on them to go overtop of these brilliant little minis, or you can have the kids make them the first day of school! What’s great is that all you need is one hardcover book to create the “shelf” part of the… shelf, which is actually just a hinge, so make sure one of your assignments is a real killer, like War and Peace. If that dog won’t hunt, (please see your Dictionary of Idioms) simply send a note home to parents telling them to send one large hardcover book to use as the base of the shelf… you’ve already asked them to bring everything else from their houses and Target, anyway. You’re a genius!

In the office: In plain sight, everyone can enjoy the view, see the titles, and even pull a book out without having to freak that a shelf will slip or that the mountain you’ve created on your desk will become less a Leaning Tower of Pisa and more a… fallen city of Rome. Affix your hinged L-bracket to the wall using the YOULEVEL and adhering one YOUHANGIT squishy thingy over each screw hole.

NOTE: If you’re that guy—yes you—who thinks you can do this to your cubicle, you are incorrect. You may not. Don’t. We’re watching you Dave.

Renters and homeowners: If you just don’t have all the room you wish you had for your personal library and even tighter quarters make shelving not the most advantageous option, try this amazingly simple and beautiful way to get that sweet collection of Brit Lit and Dictionary of Word Origins up on the wall. Stagger the L-brackets across the wall for a fun, eclectic look.

See? Using the simplest hardware and tools along with the YOUHANGIT wall hanging system makes this so easy your five-year-old could do it. Please note: this is not a permission slip to hand a drill to your five-year-old.

Make as many as you want to, creating a free-flowing feel to your classroom, office, or home. It’s so easy and cheap, but most importantly, it makes you look smart and artsy (smartsy?) and if you’re the new teacher, the hipster parents will think it’s all the jazz. Just wait until the open house, SmartsyPants!