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Books and Decluttering

post #1 of 4
4/23/06 at 1:42pm
Thread Starter 
I am announcing a moratorium on buying new books! It's an addiction but I don't even have room for the ones I have (BF and I have boxes full of them in our basement for when we buy/build the house of a dreams and have a library). It's driving me insane. I need to go through the boxes and start purging. I keep hanging on to them because books were such a huge part of university (Eng Lit degree) and because I keep thinking of DS and maybe he'll read them when he's older, but really I KNOW I'm not going to read my Old English texts again or Fouccault or any else of that crap and if DS wants to read it I'm sure he can buy his own and fill his house with them. It's crazy to keep storing them, just in case, isn't it? And what would they do in my library but take up shelf space and be some sort of stupid signifier that I am edumacated. I'm going to get rid of them.

And I'm not buying any more. I swear.

I feel better now, .
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post #2 of 4
4/23/06 at 4:06pm
Go you! Identifying the problem is the first step I love books myself and would buy tons and tons but many get outdated fairly quickly and most can be found at the library any time I need them. My weakness is kids books though : When you are ready you could try to sell/donate the ones you know you never will need and put the rest aside for your son or whoever. But baby steps...one thing at a time!!
post #3 of 4
4/23/06 at 10:09pm
What I told my husband as we went through our bookshelves last week, and he gave the same excuse that when we have our dream home we'll have a library to put them all in- When we have our dream home with a library, we'll have the money to buy them all again if we wanted to!

We still have a LOT of books. I am terribly attached to my back copies of Reader's Digest (from when I was a kid) and can't get myself to get rid of them. College Textbooks for now we are keeping. If they're relevant to my home daycare (education books) they stayed upstairs, the rest are in the basement. Mainly because I found out for transferring my credits I may have to show them the book as proof of why the class should transfer, etc etc. Hubby's books are related to the computers field, which he may decide to go back to school for if he ever makes uup his mind, so we kept those.

However we got rid of a LOT of books. Any book I didn't enjoy reading was gone, had a duplicate of (DH had 3 copies of Jurassic Park.... purposely) are gone. Probably abotu 30 books gone for now, hopefully more to follow. I'm going to read whatevers on the shelf and if I can't get through it its gone.

Melody
post #4 of 4
4/23/06 at 10:16pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DTmama1
What I told my husband as we went through our bookshelves last week, and he gave the same excuse that when we have our dream home we'll have a library to put them all in- When we have our dream home with a library, we'll have the money to buy them all again if we wanted to!
I like this! Because, really, if I follow this train of thought, how many of the ones I'm getting rid of will I realistically want to buy again in 10 years? My guess is very, very few of them. I'm going to steal your way of thinking!

Yeah, we definitely have duplicates. BF and I both did the same degree, same school, just 8 years apart. And yet so much of our collections is the same. not much changes in victorian lit.

Baby steps...good advice, dziejen. Thanks.

This is keeping me motivated (ok, it's only a few hours later, but still )