A Book Lover's Dilemma

Someone else's bookshelf

In decluttering my bookcase this past weekend, I had to ask myself (not for the first time), what should I do with all these books?  I love books. I am emotionally attached to most of my books.  I can't just throw them away.  There isn't much (if any) value in selling them.  Most of them are ones that I still want to read, which is why I bought them in the first place, or else I have already read them and liked them so much, chances are I will read them again.

Roberta left me a comment earlier this week saying bookcases were "the bane of her existence", how there was never enough room on the shelves.  I can see how that could be a problem as well.  I have several other bookcases around my apartment, besides the one I tidied last weekend.  One is full of beading supplies, one is for craft supplies (with part of one shelf used for related books). Three others are full of books, one is full of magazines and one is a collection of various jewellery related things - magazines, books and tools.  Plus there are a few piles of magazines on other pieces of furniture as well.  Oops, I almost the small bookcase in the kitchen which I use for storing (mostly unused) cookbooks and yes, more magazines.

Tidying and decluttering each of these bookshelves is definitely on my "to do" list and I'm not sure how it will go when I do.  After last week, I started a pile of books that I either have to read or discard and, believe it or not, I began reading two of them this week.  I am enjoying them both but I already know I will only keep one when I'm done (Julia Cameron's "Letters to a Young Artist"), the other I will not (Hemingway's "A Moveable Feast").

In the meantime, I wanted to share a couple of websites that might be of help if you are looking for inspiration.   The Declutter Diarist describes herself as "a 30 something working wife who is ready to take on the Clutter Challenge".  She left a comment on my blog a few weeks ago so now I check in on hers from time to time when I need inspiration (although she hasn't posted lately, hopefully she hasn't fallen off the declutter wagon).  Earlier in January, she posted a blog with this link in it:  Declutter Calendar, which is another blog telling you where to get a monthly decluttering calendar.  Which reminded me of the FlyLady website, which I first heard about from The Dixon Chick - more good ideas for decluttering on a daily basis.

It might have been the Declutter Diarist who turned me on to this website:  Small Notebook.  It seems to have great ideas about what to do about all sorts of things (including this discouraging one about:  selling-used-books-still-no-money/).  I have bookmarked this site and will definitely be checking it out as much as I can.

Have you heard about the "living with 100 things" movement? I'm not sure I could ever pare down my life that much but I read an interesting article in the Globe and Mail the other day about a minimalist family:  article.  The author says she went from 300 books to 6.  As I go through my bookshelves, I'll have to see which books I would pick if I could only pick 6.  Now that's a dilemma!