A few days ago my husband sent me a link about minimalist living, which eventually led me to an article about Breaking the Sentimental Attachment to Books. I gave it a read because I have been thinking its time to weed out some of our books. It only took a few sentences before I was laughing. The author talks about the piles of books on every flat surface, which sounded quite familiar, but the mention of the two huge book shelves brought me up short. Two bookshelves? How huge? Did they span an entire wall? Or is she just talking about your average five shelf book shelf? Because this doesn't seem like that many books to me. The last time all my books fit on two tall five shelf book shelves was...never. When I took my books out of my parents house for the first time, they didn't fit on two bookshelves. And a lot of books have been added since then. Sometimes by the box.
After I calmed down a bit about the difference in scale between my book collection and the one mentioned in the article, I read the rest of the article. I did find it a helpful starting point for paring down the book collection. There are some good things to think about and ideas about evaluating what books to discard. But there is no way I am ever going to own only twenty books. I'm not even remotely interested in that.
I totally agree - 20 books would be impossible. Unless that is goal to buy new books in a year, or maybe 6 months, since I do have 5 kids.
ReplyDeleteI have 3 5 foot book shelves full in just the front room of my house.