Another week has come and gone. Did you get your books organized? Last week we de-cluttered the toys that (I’m sure) were taking over our homes and this week was all about getting of our books organized (not including children’s books or cookbooks).
Did you join in on this De-Clutter Your Home challenge? If so, please post in the comments. I’d love to hear how everyone did this week!
Our book collection is embarassingly small, but I’m an anti-clutter freak and always get rid of things if they are just taking up space in our home. I will only keep books that I know we will read again (of if they look vintage and cool, and I can use them for decoration).
This is the pile of books that we started with:
Not too large of a pile, but not very small either!
Over half of the books were Richard’s, so he helped me to go through everything and decide what we were and were not going to keep.
After about 20 minutes, we had a pretty good amount of books to be donated (23-25):
Richard took the books down to the basement and put them in our “to donate” section (which is overflowing, by the way – we need to get over to the thrift store ASAP!) and I cleaned up the bookshelf.
Man, those things get dusty pretty fast!
I also wiped down the covers of the books with a damp cloth.
Once the shelf and books were clean and dust-free, I put all of our “keep” books back.
This is our current book collection:
We went from about 75 books, down to around 50 (some of them are not on this shelf).
I’m so proud of us! That’s less stuff that I have to worry about keeping clean around here.
Since we don’t really have a huge collection of books, I decided to organize them by height (and I also separated my books from Richard’s, since they are so different).
The very bottom shelf has a container with my camera stuff inside. That thing is huge and takes up too much room on my desk, so I gave up some space on the bookshelf to house all of this equipment (camera, flash, extra lens, etc.).
This entire De-Clutter Your Home challenge probably only took about an hour, start to finish. Organizing your books is something everyone should do from time to time, getting rid of books that serve no purpose to you anymore. If you aren’t ever going to read it again – give it away to someone who will.
Did you organize your books this week? If so, please share your results!
More from this series:
- De-Clutter Your Toys (Challenge Complete)
- De-Clutter Your Books (Challenge Complete)
- De-Clutter Your Recipes (Challenge Complete)
- De-Clutter A Cabinet (Challenge Complete)
- De-Clutter Your Coupons (Challenge Complete)
- De-Clutter Your Email
flyingmommy – Thank you! I’m glad you love it.
I did it a few weeks ago, after seeing your post, and arguing with husband about where I would put my stockpiles of toiletpaper. LOL. ended up taking 10 boxes of books to a donation bin!
PS. LOVE your website!
gaiagirl – I’m glad that I could inspire you to purge your books. Those 50+ books will be a great donation.
You inspired me to purge the books one more time. We do own a home, and dream of a library with ladders and all, but in reality we don’t need all of those books. I was shocked to be able to purge probably 50+ books – including books on simple living.
And this is after I have weeded through them several times in the past year. We can donate to our local literacy agency book store.
Katie:
“Where is human nature so weak as in a bookstore?” Henry Ward Beecher
Of course, we can now add the online venues–way too easy!
Cassie, I would love a study, a book lined room with wing chairs and a fireplace…….
I so need to go through my books! I don’t think I could ever purge that many though. My one materialistic weakness is books!
Carrie – Haha, that’s not the only one in that pile, either.
I only kept the really good organizing books, that I actually reference.
teachermum – I know, out book collection is pathetic! We do plan on getting more books though.. we want to eventually have a study when we buy a home, it will be a huge office and the walls will be covered by books! We’re saving for that home right now though, so no way we’re going to buy books too.
It makes me giggle to see such a small collection of books…we converted our small main floor laundry room into a library!
My next project will be to clear out homeschooling books, but that will be a tough task! There is so much I’d like to still learn from many of the books so they can’t all got yet.
We generally don’t have/keep fiction books so most of ours are more in the vein of “reference” type books for living. Those we do donate to our church library every so often-we know we can still find them there if needed!
Susan
i had to giggle i noticed you put an organizing book in the donation pile – great job I need to finsh the kids toys – how quickly i week goes when your not looking
Abbie – OMG! I re-read these blog posts too and I didn’t even notice that one. HAHA. Damn cloth. I’ll fix that.. thanks for pointing it out.
Melody – Oh yeah, Hoarders just makes me want to get rid of stuff!
Carla – Thank you!
I’m lol’ing at Abbies comment! I ave some of those cloths too….
Your bookshelf looks awesome!! I really need to declutter mine in my living room…. Maybe I’ll put that on my “to do” list for next week!
Cassie you did a great job. I don’t know if you have ever watched the show Hoarders but I find it amazing. Cause I am the total opposite. I love to purge and get rid of stuff. I am constantly taking bags to Goodwill. My kids think I’m nuts but on the night before garbage day I literally look for anything and everything that I can toss. To me less is more. Less to clean makes me happy!
Cassie,
You’re going to think that I’m just reading your posts looking for typo’s, but you’re killing me here…. lol… I just laughed so hard.
What kind of cloth did you use to wipe down the books??? I know that’s the kind of cloth that I use too….
-Abbie