Do you recognize that bench/bookshelf? The one I “got rid of” almost two years ago.
I did remove it from its chronically-piled spot by the back door. It sat in the garage for a while, in my entryway for a while, and back in the garage.
I had the idea to put it in my daughter’s room. The main reason I don’t love it in other spots is that it’s small in scale.
So a few weeks ago, I decided to finally move it. My daughter was thrilled with the idea, even when I said that we would be removing her current bookshelf.
I explained how we would do this. Just like when the boys decluttered their bookshelf, she would choose her favorite books to put on the shelf first. Anything that didn’t fit couldn’t be kept.
That’s the “contain” er concept in action, people.
If she found another book she loved after the shelf was full, she would have to remove an already-chosen book to make room.
That’s the one-for-one rule in action, folks.
It went well. (Except that the shelves weren’t meant for books and wouldn’t allow most of her books to stand up . . . )
In fact, we went ahead and divided any books into a Like It Shelf and a Love It Shelf. This made the one-for-one rule even easier to follow when we came upon a forgotten favorite.
I believe I might make my own Like It and Love It Shelves somewhere.
--Nony
We love books, and were reading the same books over and over.
To get some variety, we brought in a box, and after reading a book we dropped it in the box, making our way through the whole collection was fun.
We rediscovered some oldies but goodies, and culled out some we never really cared for.
My kids are young enough that we haven’t had to get rid of any books yet but I dread the day since I am such a book lover I’ll probably want to keep more books than the kids will.
I just went through my bills from my kids childhood. I couldn’t get rid of anymore. The older grandkids never really liked at them. We are expecting another one soon and my daughter didn’t seem interested in them. She says she will have her own books! But i love these! But what use are they if the grandkids don’t like them?
Send the books to the library or donate them. If our library doesn’t shelve them, they sell them in a couple stores in town or in the tiny breezeway to the library and twice a year at two events in our community, one event in June and the county fair in September.
I had to do the same with books our grandchildren didn’t want.
The grandsons were given many from their dad’s when he was in grade school and granddaughter got her fathers. Some remained that I had picked out that our sons or grandchildren never picked up, so off they went.
If my local library isn’t on my donation day trip, I take them to another community library. I was lucky last trip. They have a limit of one box per person per day. I dropped off three.
I love the one-in, one-out idea, and am currently using it on my daughter’s bottomless pit/bedroom (although it’s actually more ‘one for the loft/one for the charity shop/one for the bin/DON’T BRING ANY MORE IN IT’S OVERFULL IN HERE STILL’ but it works, kinda!). But books? I couldn’t do it to those, noooo. I’d rather move the bed out and put some more shelves in, that would work!
Yeah, there’s no way I could limit books. Books are magical things and we have an entire ROOM in our house dedicated to books (plus two overflowing Kindles, plus the three 6-foot bookshelves in my daughter’s room, plus…)
I agree, Angie. For inveterate book lovers like you, me and my daughter’s family, books are IN. Every so often I cull whatever I’m positive I’ll never want to read again, and she, her husband and their three kids do the same. All of them also use two different library systems, as do I. So far neither of our homes requires walking through narrow hallways between tall stacks of books, but except for our bathrooms and kitchens, every room has several bookcases tall and short. (Neither kitchen has room for books, even cookbooks.)
I like the random barbie just laying there!
I saw that too and had to chuckle!
Barbies are like bears–they lie wherever they want!
I just broke out in a cold sweat. I have hundreds and hundreds of books (not counting what I have on my Kindle). The saddest thing about it is, I’m not sure I’ll ever get through all of them. I just don’t have as much time to read anymore. I do need to go through them again and try to weed some out. I tend to read favorites repeatedly, so those will always have a home here. But I just simply don’t have the room to keep them all. The question is…can I really get rid of a book?
Yes I can. If I can weed out Christmas decorations and donate a bunch, I can do the same with books. I think… 😀
Thanks so much for the Love It or Like It phrase. This really helps me to decide what to keep and what not to keep. I can use this on everything in my house, not just books, because I seem to be warehousing a lot of items because I feel I “Should” keep them. Anyway, about the books, I stood in front on my bookcase a few weeks back and figured that I probably won’t live long enough to read them all and now with the differentiating factor of Love or Like I think I can purge some and finally have an amount that doesn’t overrun the bounds of the “container”. Thanks so much for all these tips. You’ve really helped me understand how to put these rules into practice.
I love hearing this, Dianne!!!
I have a book problem. They’re everywhere. I love them so much! So I keep my favorites on the shelf because I read them all the time, and I started a book exchange. Someone gives me a book, I read it and give it to someone else, who gives me a book in exchange, and so on. I always have something to read and the books aren’t accumulating on my nightstand (as much).
This is why libraries are my favorite place to visit with my kids. Enjoy a never ending list of books that they store at no cost.
lol, some of my children think I have a book problem. My husband KNOWS better than to think I have a book problem. Books are my friends. Basically my BEST friends. They never change and they always lift me up or guide me to do better. 🙂
I have several shelves that I separate into Love it /Cherish it, non-fiction helpful and inspirational, classics, Christian Kids, some non-fiction schoolish books that I don’t love but know I’d best keep them, and Dictionaries, Atlases, etc.
When the kids said I had too many, I said, “Fine. READ them, and then we will decide which are worth keeping and toss the others. Until then, they stay.”
I LOVE planning the perfect bookcase (s). Once those are built THEY will be my container/limit. 🙂
Maybe I’m a freak, but although I love to read, I don’t own all that many books and that’s how I like it. I check them out at the library — that place where I can check out whatever book I want… whenever I want! Most books I read I’m not going to reread again and again and again, so to me, they just take up space and gather dust. Why not donate the books to library or a little free library where others can enjoy them, too? Just my two cents!
Books are the heaviest things to move. You can only put them in a small box because otherwise you can’t lift the box. My husband has all of his college books (graduated 45 years ago), and there are so many of them! He refuses to part with any books, no matter how outdated they are. I am trying to read my books and then donate them.
My husband and I are both pastors (he’s retired, I’m currently serving a congregation). When we moved from the East Coast to the midwest, we had more weight on the truck from books than anything else. We also vastly exceeded the average weight for a cross-country move. The movers said “The heaviest moves are always for ministers.” I believe it!
As a former librarian, and now a volunteer who runs the book sales for my local public library, I had to jump in here. It’s interesting how quickly we “book people” go from calm talk about decluttering to “But not my books. Nononononooooo!”
But the container concept is real, y’all. Even a 5-story university library, like where I used to work, is a container that will get filled up in time. Libraries get rid of books ALL. THE. TIME. And while I would never tell anyone to get rid of a book that they honestly love (I have something like 18 bookcases full, myself), the truth is that we probably don’t love them all equally. We love having a collection of books. We love how they look on the shelves. We love what they say about us to visitors. We love always being able to find something to read, or re-read. But decluttering books is not the same as choosing your favorite child, honest.
Which is why “Like it or Love it” is such a brilliant idea. Even if we’re not ready to let go, it desensitizes the issue, and reminds us that some books are keepers and some are just okay. Maybe they have to sit there being just okay for a while until we’re ready to let them go. Maybe we’ll just keep them in mind as the next ones to go to make room when we get something new. Maybe we’ll realize we’ve been meaning to read them for ten years and never gotten around to it, because there’s always something that looks more interesting. Maybe they’re not even very good, but we’ve just collected EVERYTHING on a subject. (I have three full shelves of books about decluttering, but I haven’t even read most of them, except for Dana’s.)
But books are like everything else. They’re things. They’re useful and enjoyable, and some of us get sentimental about them, like some of us get sentimental about old birthday cards or Mom’s china (both of which I can personally let go of without blinking.) Keep the best, and donate the rest; don’t let them get in the way of your actual life with your actual loved ones.