We have a bookshelf in our living room, which is very similar to the one in the right foreground of this photo I found on Pinterest.  My husband has always used the lowest of the shelves as his centralized area to keep his wallet and keys when he gets home from work.  Since he claimed this space very early on, it's also the space where his mail goes after I've sorted it every day.  The only problem is that not only does his mail stack up, but he's taken to making this his catch all for all the items he may need but not right now.  His passport is there.  Some paperwork from his doctor is there.  He's a receipt collector, and they end up there.  There is some chalk there?  We don't even own a chalkboard as far as I know.  And now it's not just the lowest shelf but three of the four shelves.  We have a library, so I had never planned to fill the shelves with books as pictured here, but there are some art and coffee table books on the top shelf.  I have some family pictures and candles on the other shelves, and I thought he wouldn't put anything on them, but I guess because there is plenty of space in front of the pictures, it's a great space to stack stuff on.  I'm wondering what to do to slowly take his space away from him, but honestly, just putting books on the shelves to fill them up isn't what I want to do in this space.  I think I just need to sit there starting at it until I have some inspiration.  How do you fill your bookshelves?