When Books Become Clutter

I’m still at the beginning of my project, but I’ve found some aspects of it easy, at least from an emotional-attachment point of view. Choosing clothes to donate proved painless, and I also recently sorted and recycled lots of old papers with ease, which I’ll talk about later in the week.

I can’t make a similar claim about books. Books are very important to me, and my attachment to them would take a long time to explain. My husband has a lot, but not nearly as many as me.

But I am facing the fact that they’ve become clutter, and in allowing them to become clutter I’m not showing them the respect they deserve. If I’m going to be nice to my socks, which I don’t really care about, I should absolutely be nice to my books.

I have loved to buy books since I was a teenager. Popping a mix tape into my Sony Walkman and trekking a mile to my nearest Waldenbooks was a regular weekend activity. I’d buy as many as my babysitter’s wages allowed, usually 3 or 4 at a time. At home, I always displayed them neatly, the only organized element in my otherwise chaotic bedroom.

I can’t make the same claim today. My attempts to carefully display books, on shelves and around the house as décor, have devolved into this:

This is supposed to be a tastefully arranged stack of books.

This is supposed to be a tastefully arranged stack of books.

I also sometimes start books without finishing them in a timely way. I’ll put a book aside and return to it when my frame of mind better matches the book. This year I’m trying to challenge myself to read more widely, so I decided to read a presidential biography this month. But American Lion requires more focus than I currently have so I put it aside. Thus my nightstand is a disaster of books-in-progress and other things.

This deserves its own post.

This mess deserves its own post.

A few years ago we hung shelves on one wall in our home office, which has done a lot to help us manage our books. At the moment this wall is my favorite thing about my house. It’s the first room you enter upon coming into my house, and I love that you see this space and immediately know who we are. It sets the bar for how I want the rest of our shelves to look.

My personal gold standard for book organization.

My personal gold standard for book organization.

And so I have a three-part challenge on my hands:

  1. I need to commit to keeping books on shelves and nowhere else. The books-as-décor idea does not work for me. In addition to our wall shelves, we have six free-standing shelves throughout the house which need to be better utilized.
  2. I need to manage my in-flux books better, by being more decisive about books I feel uncertain about. Maybe I’ll create a “finish it later” shelf before my nightstand qualifies for federal cleanup money.
  3. I need to pare down more. Recently I filled seven bags and donated them to a local library. And every time I donate I feel like I can’t possibly get rid of more, but somehow I manage. I try to remember how elated I feel when I hit a used book sale and find something great, and I want to pass that feeling on to others. I need to remember that.

I’ve also decided to look at our books as a true collection, and use a more discerning eye when thinking about what I truly love and want to keep. When I’m done, I want to be able to say I’ve honored our books by only keeping what we love and can accommodate in our home.