Confession time – I love books! There is a certain joy in buying a new book and putting it on your shelf … even if you haven't yet read the last 10 books you have bought. Book addicts understand this. Other people just don't get it.
As a kid, if my parents visited friends and there were no kids to play with, after dinner, I'd sit by their bookshelf and browse through their books. If they had an encylopedia set, I was elated. I loved reading and learning new things. I guess, at heart I I'm a bit of a a maven.
So I have a lot of books. Books given to me from family and friends. Books handed down from my father, Kevin Conner, or my brother-in-law, Frank Damazio – both fellow book addicts. Then there are books I have bought – new or in second hand shops all over the place. Did I mention that I have a lot of books?
The painting to the right is called "The Bookworm" and I have a beautiful version of it mounted on my library wall. One book in each hand, another one under the arm and another one between the knees. Every booklover gets it.
Well, we have recently sold our home and we are down-sizing. Yes, there are times to enlarge, to add, to expand and to make more room. We've been through plenty of those seasons. But now we are in a very different season – a time of simplifing, of letting go of a lot of stuff, and of de-cluttering. With two of our sons all grown up and married, we are moving to a house almost half the size of the one we currently live in. [See my wife, Nicole's, recent BLOG post "Honey, I Shrunk the House" for more details]
Sadly, this means there won't be room for all of my books. So I am currently working through my books, shelf by shelf and book by book … forcing myself to ask 3 questions:
- "If I haven't looked at this in the last 5 years, will I look at it in the next 5 years?" [Confession: I have looked and read a heap of my books, so this question alone isn't enough]
- "If I didnt have this book today, would I buy it?"
- "If I could only have 1 bookshelf of books, would this book be on it?"
These questions are helping me make some tough decisions … in addition to asking, "Can I get this book on Kindle and thereby take up less space by having an electronic version of it?" Sure, it's not the same as the read thing, but eBooks do save space.
It's time to give away, to bless someone else … with a book or two that they need more than I do.
Painful but freeing.
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