Day 19 of the Decluttering Challenge: Books
If you are anything like me, ten minutes on day ten was not enough time to get you through decluttering all of the books on your bookshelves.
And if you are not like me, you may have a shelf in your closet or anywhere in your home that you have not gone through in a while.
When I saw that day nineteen is decluttering bookshelves, I thought, “Cool. Easy job.”
My shelves are fairly easy because they are full of nothing but books. There are not piles of paper on the shelves. Paper clutter is my personal nemesis. It could have its whole own challenge. I do not enjoy managing papers at all. I do it, but I’d rather not do it. You know?
There was one stack of papers on my shelves, which are certificates and artworks by my kids for the family scrapbook. That stack is waiting for me to find the current scrapbook or order a new one. When I finish going through all of my shelves, I’ll know if I need to just order a new one or not.
****When you order through Amazon links on my site, I do collect small ad fees.****
These are the scrapbooks I like to order to keep the kids’ larger artworks and certificates in:
I buy these on Amazon. They are currently on sale for $18. Sometimes they are $25.
Thankfully, today was only about going through books.
I look at each individual book and decide if our family needs to keep it or not. I wrote about all the things I consider when deciding whether or not to keep a book here. Basically, it boils down to the question, “Will we ever read or reference this book again?”
If you will never read or reference a book again, you are probably safe to give it away.
Granted, I will admit, there is one series of books on these shelves that I kept because they were my Maw-Maw’s books. She had a huge library, and these keep me connected to her. When I see them, I am reminded of happy memories. They stay whether I read them or not.
In case you are wondering, it is the “Love Comes Softly” series, by Janette Oke.
That is the thing about decluttering books or anything else. Only you know what you own that has deep meaning to you.
So let’s do this! Ten minutes on a bookshelf. Too easy!
Now when I watch that video, all I can think is how much I need more lipstick and blush. For my next video, I will do us all a favor and put some on.
When the boys got home from school, I went through the books with them. They were very logical about what they kept and didn’t keep. Plus, I was able to hand one book down from one boy to another. There are so many benefits of decluttering! Sometimes you straight up get new stuff that you forgot that you had.
Happy decluttering, y’all! I’m including the 30 Day Decluttering Challenge printable below, as well as a link to the main challenge page.
Click here for the full 30 Day Decluttering Challenge post. It has links to each day of the challenge.
