This week our Scavenger Hunt was about releasing unused books. When you have books that you know you will not read again, they are clutter monsters. I listed several ways we can all release our books to be read by others. Our favorite way of sharing our unused books is by listing them on Paper Back Swap. But by using Paper Back Swap, you can get a book for every unused book you send out. Books can take up a lot of space. If you are also wanting to shrink the size of your library, you need to employ some additional tactics. I’ll tell you how we shrunk our ridiculously large library.
Deal with all of the books in one place.
The first thing we did was get all of our books in one place. We literally gathered all of our books in one room. We were preparing to paint the room that had most of our bookcases so we were making stacks in the floor anyway. It was easy for us to add to the book stacks from other rooms and sort them all before replacing them back into the bookcases. But you may not want a room to be covered with stacks of books.
You can also read the heading as deal with all of the books in each place as you come across them. Pick a pile. Pick a shelf. Pick a whole bookcase. We did do our kids books and our office shelves without adding them to the actual piles.
Separate the books by ownership.
Each person in our household has very different tastes in books. It was only fair for each one to be involved in the process. Remember, it is better not to mess with someone’s things. If you live with others, but going through the books alone, work yours first then try to get input.
Designate Space.
If you want to reduce the number of books you have, then you need to specify a goal. You are the only one who can determine what that goal can be. Do you want to reduce that stack by half? Do you want to free up one bookshelf? Do you want to eliminate one bookcase? How many books are you wanting to reduce? How many books a week? For how many weeks?
The more specific your goal is before you start the easier it will be for you to make the tough choices during the process.
Our goal was fairly lofty the first time we did this. We had a wall of built in bookcases and several free standing bookcases. Each of our children had shelving in their rooms. We were determined to let go of all of the free standing bookcases.
Sort the books by purpose.
For our little guy, we sorted the books by age appropriateness. Anything he had outgrown was added to the cull pile. Anything that he was not ready for, we put into a box to be shopped as he gets older. For the most part, this was all that needed to be done for his books. We just had to determine if the culled book was headed for the recycle bin or if it was in shape to give away.
The rest of us pulled books for leisure reading apart from our work/school books and reference books. It took very little time to go through our work books and add the majority back to our shelves.
We eliminated any general reference book if the information could be found easily on a reference website. We did keep one print dictionary for the kids and a set of Child Craft encyclopedias I have had since I was a little girl.
I included my cookbooks as reference books. I kept my three favorite cookbooks. Yes, it was hard to do, but well worth it. For many years recipe search websites have been available on the internet. Five Mushrooms is my new favorite. It will search several of the recipe sites at once for you. Now there are also many great blogs where wonderful moms list not only recipes, but full menu plans. I do not miss the cookbooks.
We also took a hard look at our other how-to and hobby books. Some were fairly easy to discard. There were many hobbies we had simply outgrown. Some we new we needed to keep. Many times it came down to one by one eliminating the least appealing until we had kept only half of the books on any given subject.
Cull the books you will not read again.
It was time to take a good look at our leisure books. We each pulled out all of the books we were pretty sure we were not going to read again.
At this point we let our teenager do with her remaining books as she wished. We did encourage her to help us with our shelves in the hope that she would gain from the process.
Put away your favorites.
My husband and I both put away all of the books that we had already read. And read. And read. We had already let go of many books that others would consider classics. We realized that our bookshelves were there for our enjoyment. We did not have a need to impress guests with the titles on the shelves. We kept only the books that were our tried and true favorites. Several times we heard, “That’s a classic! How can you let that go?” as our release piles were perused. But very few of those same people took those classics.
Set aside books you have not read.
As you are pulling the books you have not read, be honest with yourself. Are you still interested in reading it? If not, add them to the cull pile.
I selected the six books I wanted to read next and added them to my nightstand. I filled the remaining space in the book shelf until it was full. The remaining unread books went into a box that went onto a shelf in my laundry room.
Now it is time to share.
Now all that was left was to determine how best to share the books. We let friends and family shop our piles. We listed many on Paper Back Swap. We donated several to the library, shelters, and other charities.
When we were done, we had one free standing bookcase that we kept to hold the books we had listed on Paper Back Swap. The remaining free standing bookcases were empty.
No more books unless there is room.
After two weeks, we listed a 2 books for 1 credit deal in the Book Bazaar on Paper Back Swap to increase the outflow of our listed books. After four weeks we listed a 3 books for 1 credit offer. We got into the habit as we finished reading a book to determine immediately to keep it, list it or gave it away.
We did not use the credits we earned and we did not purchase any more books. As space opened up on our built in bookcases, I emptied the box in the laundry room until it was empty. We only brought new books in if there was room.
Final Thoughts
We did our office books and kids books on Friday night and finished on Saturday. By the following Friday, all of the books were gone or were listed to go. It worked for us to devote several consecutive hours over two days for the big payoff. We cut our books by almost half.
I think the reason I love Paper Back Swap so much is because you very quickly realize that each book you send out is wanted. You know it is appreciated and in some cases has been anticipated. Once you get into the habit of letting stuff go, it becomes very easy to let more and more go. And I’m not just talking books.
Each of these step can be applied for a stack or shelf of books. Each step can be applied individually without doing all of the steps at once. We continue to make even more space on our book shelves by doing a little here and there.
The important thing for you is to determine your personal goal and to keep working toward the goal until it is reached.
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