Decluttering: Part 1, Books

 

In the not-too-distant future, John and I will be downsizing. I get kind of jazzed thinking about moving to a lovely new smaller place. We haven’t actually started looking yet, but it won’t be long.

Meanwhile, I have committed myself to decluttering, or getting rid of stuff. Just arriving at the commitment stage has been a challenge. How many years have I been saying, “One of these days, I’m going to have to deal with all this…stuff.” The time is now.

My first foray a few weeks ago was books. TBH, dealing with books may be one of the biggest roadblocks to prudent decluttering. But I got a good start. I went through four rooms with bookcases and filled about 13 boxes with books. As I scanned the shelves, I tried to be ruthless. I’d ask myself, “Would I read this book again?" Or, since several books have never made it to my bedside reading table, “Am I really interested in reading this book--ever?” I reminded myself that most books are available in the public library. 

There were a few very old, sort-of interesting books. The old, hoarding me would think, “This might be valuable; I should hang on to it.” The new, enlightened me thinks, “Whether it’s valuable or not, I don’t have the time or energy to figure it out. Off to Half Price Books!”

I realized there were a lot of books I loved so much when I first read them that I thought I’d save them and read them again later. For decades that “later” meant “after I retire.” I’ve been more or less retired for a few years now, and I’m not any more motivated to re-read some of those old favorites than I was before. There are a few, but for most of them: Off to Half Price Books!

I came up with a new rubric for determining the fate of some of the books that were still on the shelves: “Are you worth packing up and dragging to a new home?” That was a very useful criterion for getting rid of a bunch of books.

And yet, there are tons of books I did not pack away that I have yet to deal with. I comfort myself by saying that I don’t have to deal with all of them right now. Not that I have any idea when I’ll be more motivated, unless the moving van is at the back door.

Thirteen boxes is nothing to sneeze at, although some of the books were so dusty that I did indeed sneeze a lot.

And, by the way, apparently some of those 13 boxes had some books of value. Altogether, we amassed about $100 from Half Price Books. By contrast, another two boxes of parenting books that we found in the garage only netted $1.97.