Clearance
Today has been mostly about this. Before I can apply the elephant’s breath I have to move furniture, and before I can do that, as anyone who has ever moved house with me knows, I have to move the books. I have a lot of books. This pile isn’t the sum of the books that were in our bedroom – this is about half. Some ended up in Isaac’s little room, some in a cupboard that I miraculously found had some room, and some even found their way into a pile for the charity shop.
This is almost unknown for me.
Books come in, but they very rarely go out.
But when I was unpacking the double packed shelves I was having two reactions:
- oh! This book! I’ve had this copy for [x] years. I remember reading this when I was in [insert appropriate house]…and cue flood of memories and a desire to flick through the pages
- ‘oh yeah, I read that.’ Tosses book aside.
So I figured that I could thin the shelves and take the ‘yeah I read that’s to the charity shop and be no worse off, but it does feel very strange. I suppose that changing any habitual behaviour is the same, and for me, clinging onto books regardless of my feelings for them has become just that – a habit. The trouble with this particular habit is that the lack of shelf space is stopping me from bringing in new books, ones that I think are more for the me I am now. (Which is not the same as saying that I’m discarding all of the old me, just that I know when I look through my shelves which parts I have assimilated, and which parts simply skimmed the surface for a while.) And if I can’t broaden my bookshelves then I feel as if I’m simply marking time, trapped in a room of old obsessions.
The best solution would be a big house with several rooms that can be given over to library shelves, but since that’s not in the offing I’ll weed and cull instead. Just don’t expect me to be entirely happy about it.
I know how you feel, we have moved quite a few times .I think it took a week of daily trips to the charity shop to clear what we could part with last time. Even so our book case is double filed like yours. We have used unusual space too for the odd billy bookcase. Have you thought of a shelf above the door? A friend of mine even uses the top of her kitchen units!
From: ruth on 17 January 2008, 20:48 #Trapped in a room of old obsessions – how well put! Sometimes they’re not even our own…
I am the daughter of two bibliophile parents who moved from the States 40 years ago, complete with with their book hoard. I studied English, worked in publishing, and now have book-loving sons, so getting rid of books is almost unheard of to me. Now that my mother’s gone and my father’s beautiful mind has receded into a shell of dementia, many of those books have come to me, and they possess an awesome sentimental charge.
But it’s so easy to get stuck in a sentimental swamp, and some critical sifting has to occur periodically in order to keep us properly in the here and now.
You’ve inspired me to take another look at those dusty shelves – partly because I want to get back into textiles and creating stuff instead! Thanks!
From: Scrapiana on 29 January 2008, 12:03 #“Books come in, but they very rarely go out.”
How wonderful to read this post, I thought I was the only one who felt like this !! I can’t bear to get rid of books, to me they feel like children (except for the very rare occasion there is a book that I buy which I hate). Mine too are double filled on the shelves.
I still have books from when I was a child which I read to my children. I have just started reading “Lark Rise to Candleford” again after watching it on TV. This is a copy I bought in the 70’s and it is falling apart as the glue has dried on the binding.
I did send a pile to a charity shop after reading in a book about organising your home that if you did get rid of a book, you could probably find it in the library. It still hurt though!
I am trying not to buy too many new books and the fact that we have a local community library run by volunteers, helps.
Carry on with the good work.
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You know, since I started to purge my books regularly I have been feeling much happier. At first it felt very weird. I come from a family who superstitiously clings to every single book because one of my grandmother’s once lost a whole bookcase full of books and my father still hasn’t gotten over it. But nowadays I only keep books that I am highly likely to read again, or that are classics. So I have managed to stay around 950 books for years.
Because there is never enough shelf space even if you open your own library.
From: Susanne on 17 January 2008, 13:43 #