I am a hoarder of things.

One of my absolute favorite activities - ever - is meandering around an antique mall, up and down all of the aisles [I'm very methodical about it, and if you ever go with me, don't even think about rushing me], looking through shelves and boxes of all of the random things stacked up and packed into all of the booths.  Paraphernalia of every decade mashed all together at once, ready for me to pick through and search for hidden gems.  I mostly am attracted to vintage pottery [I love Haeger pots, especially in their mustard gold color], wood sculptures, animal-shaped brass objects, and milk glass.  And pretty much everything else that exists.
As that is my favorite activity, I've come to accumulate a lot of things.  And since the Haus has these amazing built in shelves, I have a place to put them all!   [well, most of them, anyway] 
When we unpacked until May 2014, the shelves looked like this:

[apparently every time a post had these shelves in it, my Dad got all twitchy.  He prefers order.]

So I set about making some sort of sense of my collection.  In order to do that, I took everything off of the shelves to take proper stock of what I was dealing with.  After that, it's fairly easy to arrange things in order to not make your dad twitchy.  

Step 1: Categorize all of your things.  You can kind of see my groups here: milk glass [on the rug], wood objects [on the left sofa], mustard Haeger pots [also on the left sofa], aqua & teal things [on the rug on the left], metallic objects [on the hearth], miscellaneous-colored things [on the right sofa], and books [still on the shelves]

Step 2: arrange the books in small stacks on the shelves, in a way where they balance each other.  Not all on the same side, not all on the same shelf [I don't have enough for that anyway, haha :)], and alternating some vertical and some on their sides, to make more surface for putting of aforementioned things.  It doesn't have to be hard and fast - you can always move things when more stuff gets added in case things aren't working.

Step 3: Pepper the largest objects around, to balance the weight of the books.  Or, in the case of a few objects, to hold the books up as a bookend.

Step 4: Add in all of your favorite objects, so it's almost like they're first in line at a GA concert.  They get the best spots.  In my case, it's the mustard Haeger pots, and the best wood objects.  Those are all warm colors, so adding those first together worked well; all of the warm objects are spread around for even distribution.

Step 5:  Add in some counterpoints.  Everything I had just added was warm, so I put in my cooler colored things for balance.

Step 6: Keep adding and balancing!  I sprinkled around all of my metallic things, and started with the milk glass.  Heights are varied so nothing gets too heavy or hidden.

And after most was added [some things that didn't end up working are now in the cabinets] it looked like this!

And because gifs are fun:

And because I have a job that makes me insanely busy all summer, and thus unable to blog anything not for clients, this 'final' photo was taken on May 22, 2014:

And because I'm never finished buying pretty things, this photo was taken on January 14, 2015:

I've switched out some things!  And I got a new, super awesome walnut slab coffee table [thanks to my Mom, who both kindly puts up with me and my slowness at antique malls, and buys me pretty things when she's feeling generous].  That prompted a rug rearrangement, and things are feeling more cozy in there.  Other new stuff that I recently procured:

Very cool fifties Haeger pot on the left [gifted to me by a great and thoughtful client], and someone I've named Billy. Billy is only 5" long and has sharp teeth. 

More brass!  Especially my lobster.  That lobster is my lobster :) [yay for Friends being on Netflix!]

And this amazing parrot, who is about 12" tall [from another recent antique shop excursion]

A cute Frankoma pot, next to my tiny guy having a blast in the snow.

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The shelves are definitely still CRAZY full, but I love all of my things.  At least now it's somewhat balanced, and a little less 'crammed onto the shelf'

And for a blast from the past, here's the room almost exactly 1 year ago:

And now.