Other than the occasional college hand-me-down, garage sale find, or unnecessary kitchen appliance, my main contribution to our household’s decorating scheme comes in book form. Hardcover, paperback, electronic – if you can read it, I’ve probably owned a copy. Sometimes two or three due to forgetfulness and a variety of gift-giving occasions.
I could blame my long-ago English major for the glut, but my Intro to Shakespeare and Literature of the Romantic Era classes are only partly responsible for the jaw-dropping array of books that took over our back bedroom almost the moment we moved into this house. Piles upon piles soon spilled over the floor, most scattered and tumbled on a search for an unread volume or a beloved favorite. I could have hidden bodies under my Jane Austen collection alone, and no one would know. Not even the most dedicated English lit major could have read all these in four years, plus done all the requisite essays, coffee shop stops and poetry readings, and no sane professor would have required it.
No, a closer diagnosis of the problem actually comes down to one word: Obsession. Since I am a book collector with a typical collector’s zeal for accumulation and a horror of thinning the masses, my toppled stacks have only grown larger and more intimidating over the years. I suspect they brought others into the fold the way all the best cult members do, and naturally some of the more prolific ones bred, so there were soon tiny Little Golden Books running around everywhere, flashing their yellow foil spines and colorful covers. At least the Poky Little Puppy appeared to be house-trained or we’d really have had a mess.
And so over the course of the last several weeks I sorted and stacked and piled and boxed, employing a ruthlessness the strictest anti-clutter guru would applaud. Soon only my unread books and favorite re-reads remained, fluffing out a goodly number of shelves in place of the photos and knickknacks that used to occupy those slots. The second-tier books – the ones I liked but see no need to re-read – I farmed out to friends.
In the end, I dumped the final rejects, those even my friends wouldn’t take, into several crates bound for the library. This gave me a little twinge since it’s a bit of a moral dilemma. My soul could be in peril if I foist off my least favorite tomes on these unsuspecting librarians and their patrons. But then, someone must have seen something in them, or they wouldn’t have been printed in the first place. That’s what I tell myself anytime I encounter a book that doesn’t lift my balloon, at least: Someone must have thought it was good.
The upshot is that we’ve reclaimed a room. I also have a tidy little tax refund for a charitable contribution plus an entire set of shelves dedicated to unread wonders, making new book selection easy. Now the hard part: only buying the essentials until I’ve pared away the unreads. Wish me luck and a great deal of fortitude on that one. I’m going to need it.
The only thing that has kept me from being buried under masses of books is being able to donate used books to the local library. Of course since at least a quarter of these books started out at the used book sale at the same library I guess you can call it recycling. Yeah, that’s it, I’m recycling books and by the look of some of these well read paperbacks I see every year at the sale, I’m not the only one recycling.
Oh, you have no idea how much decluttering/decollecting I’ve been doing lately in preparation for the little one’s arrival. I must have thrown away hundreds of magazines that I realized I hadn’t read in ages. I’m sure I decided to keep them for one reason or another, but since I couldn’t come up with one, I tossed them. Next stop: go through my TBR mountain because I KNOW there are books I’ll never get to. *sigh*
Because I’m a numbers person, how many books did you re-locate? How many did you keep?
The majority of books that I buy I donate to the library or friends.
Due to limited space in my apartment, I can only keep my favorite authors which I limit. The good thing is most of the authors write 3-book series (except for Janet and J.D. Robb) so I still have plenty of room for more books.
Love decluttering. 🙂 Enjoy your space.
@Cynthia – An excellent point! And it’s true that lots of my books were used, so it’s no big deal to send them off so someone else can use them, too. Hmmm. Maybe the fact that someone else gave them up first is an indication? Nah. I’ve found some really good books second-hand.
@Marcia – Getting rid of unread books that I know I’ll never get around to was a huge source of guilt for me. I can’t believe how much money I spent on books that I never, ever read and that I now find totally unappealing.
@Dru – I didn’t actually count, but I relocated several hundred books and gave another several hundred away. It was a huge task going through all of those one by one. Wish I had been as disciplined as you! Maybe it’ll be easier now.
@Keri – Me, too – once it’s done, at least. It always makes me feel so accomplished. At the time, though, it’s so daunting.
You need to come over to my house and motivate me. We have a sitting room with a fireplace that’s been taken over by piles of books all over the floor. My husband is supposed to be building wall shelving to house them.
Yeah.
It’s been MONTHS.
Wow, I’d love to visit your house!
🙂
I love books so much. I really have to force myself to not buy many and I also thin my stacks by passing my books along to my mom and sisters. But then they pass their books to me… LOL
Congrats on paring down. 🙂
Simplify, simplify said Thoreau and boy was he right! Still, I have your problem, books just multiply. I’m fascinated with the new e-book technology for that very reason.
Hi Caryn,
I too hoard books like they are the latest clothing fashion. lol. A few months ago I had a clean out, and donated two huge boxes full of novels to the Australian Literacy Foundation.
I’m a member of Shadow Forest Authors. Their mission is to encourage every author worldwide and from every genre to donate just one copy of their title to fill a void in reading materials and get both paperback books and e-books where they are urgently needed. Authors and supporters standing together to make a difference, our humble shadows speaking volumes. 🙂
Here’s the link if anyone is interested.
http://www.shadowforestauthors.com
Worth a thought. I expect to return from the conference soon with more books and the empty shelves I had empty are now full. Time for another clean out. 🙂
I did the same thing a few months ago, and even use the “ruthless” work. It’s amazing how those shelves are already filling up. Part of the problem is I have so many autographed books — many by friends and chapter mates. I can’t part with them!