This is a HARD category for me. The good news is I have a deadline, which motivates me. The local library is having a book sale in a couple of weeks, so they are taking donations now. I’m on it!

Here were the piles:

YES SCANNED

SARAH’S

IDK

MAYBE

KEEP BUT NOT IN LIBRARY

YESES TO SCAN

DONATE

HANNAH’S

RACHEL’S

JOE’S

MARY’S

BOB’S

MATTHEW’S

ONE OF THE KIDS

JODIE’S

I know I made progress because the donate pile is pretty large. Many of the books I’m letting go of are homeschooling materials that I’m fairly certain I’d never use again. (A fellow former homeschooler is going to post them in a homeschooling Facebook group for me. I’ll see if there are any takers.) This has been a gradual process of letting go for me. The curricula and books went out in waves. I thought I might be finished last time, but nope, there’s still more I don’t need.

I downloaded an app called Libib to inventory the keepers. One thing I discovered is that I have books all over the house. Check this out.

I started out by keeping the books that I love and think I’m gonna read again, the books that I really want to read someday, and some reference books. I got rid of the books that are not up to my standard for quality, or that I wasn’t really interested in reading again, or for the first time. Then I added in a bunch of picture books that I love, and that are still in decent shape. For grandchildren? Young visitors?

I was considering keeping some books that are on popular book lists in case I might want to read them someday. Uh oh… sounds like just in case…

And what about the cookbooks I don’t use? Like this one…

I don’t use it anymore, but I used to use it all the time. That’s why it looks the way it does. How is this meeting my quality standard?

I decided that I’m not keeping books on popular book lists just in case. One reason is because I estimated that it would take me 2 to 5 years to read all of the books I was already keeping. And another reason is I could waste a lot of time reading lousy books on lists. I recently had a bad experience with our movie poster list. We started scratching off movies we watched on our “Top 100” movie poster in 2020. We’re getting close to finishing it now. A couple of weeks ago we watched part of A Clockwork Orange. We didn’t finish it, and I was quite disturbed that I saw what I saw, and that it would even be on our list, or any list. How many times can I use the word list?

Anyway, this has been a successful purge. Here are the stats for “my” books (not including books in Bobby’s study or in the kids’ rooms). 12% of the books are no longer “mine”. They either belonged to someone else all along, or someone kept a book I was purging. 26% of the books are going out the door, some back to my sister and some are being donated. This means I have kept 62%, but I have let go of 38% of the books! I’m planning to do it again next March or April before the library book sale. Maybe then I’ll be ready to let go of more. For now, I am pleased that I am feeling lighter and freer. I wish I had a better word for it. Also, all of my books have assigned homes.