When it comes to downsizing our possessions, some things are easy — like knickknacks we don’t like, dinnerware we don’t need, or clothes that don’t fit. Others, however, present more of a challenge; and I don’t think I’m the only one who puts books near the top of that list.
Therefore, I was excited to hear from Barry, who recently decluttered his bookshelf. He kindly agreed to share his “before” and “after” photos with us:
Barry’s bookshelf
Here’s what he wrote about his experience:
As a book lover and a graduate of medical school some years back, I’ve carted half a ton of books around wherever I’ve lived. About a year ago I began reading Leo Babauta’s works on simplicity and minimalism and have made significant progress in shedding nonessentials including some of my books. (I have a post about Breaking Up With Your Books that was inspired by a friend’s similar predicament with book clutter.)
Five years ago after becoming a single parent, I downsized into a small beach house here in California and the one bookcase I kept was still crammed full and became a catchall for odds and ends. It really started to get to me so the first step was to color code the books. Some of my friends asked me how I’d ever find anything with the books arranged this way, but I responded…’Since I read them all I think I know my books!’ Finding the book you want is never an issue if you’ve read it. :)
The second step was shed more volumes and in the process make my bookshelf a bit more appealing and minimalist in nature. I bought an Amazon Kindle and, except as gifts for others, I haven’t been able to buy a print book since. Now, like my music, I buy my books in digital format. I guess that means my library won’t be expanding either.
How inspiring! I love how Barry realized that arranging his books wasn’t the solution, and instead narrowed down his collection dramatically. By keeping only the volumes most important to him, he’s created a wonderful, streamlined library that perfectly fits his needs.
Furthermore, he’s maintaining his minimal library by purchasing new books in digital format. I’m using the same strategy, and dream of the day when every book ever published is available electronically!
Big thanks to Barry for sharing this with us! Please check out his blog, 4 Plates, 4 Cups, 4 Bowls ~ Tips for a Simpler, More Meaningful Life, to read more about his minimalist journey.
Do you have a minimalist makeover to share? If so, please email me your “before” and “after” pics, and a few words about your inspiration, motivation, or techniques:
ct09 AT missminimalist.com (remove the spaces and replace the AT with @, of course!)
{If you’d like to read more about minimalist living, please consider buying my book, The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide, or subscribing to my RSS feed.}
I just got rid of all my used books online a few days ago. I used BookScouter.com to compare a bunch of used book buyers. Unfortunately you can only enter them one at a time, but I got through all 150 or so books and found a buyer for most of them. I didn’t feel like taking the time to go through the list of prices I had accumulated or take the time to ship to a whole bunch of places, so I just looked for the ones that popped up the most so I could ship with as few boxes as possible. It turns out the two I had picked give you free shipping. I’ve made $150 so far, with more to come, with books that I’ve read two or three times and had been just sitting on the shelf.
As far as deciding what to get rid of, I decided to just get rid of it all, and if it turned out I wanted to read one again, I could always buy it for Kindle with the money I got from the used books.
I had considered one of those online things where you share your books with other people and use the points to get books in return, but I didn’t want to have to ship out about 150 books individually and pay postage on all of them. I also wanted everything out of here right away.
Yesterday was my big book day. I went from 5,000 personal books in March to 186 personal books. That meant going from 4 big bookcases, 1 medium bookcase, 2 small bookcases, and 1 smaller bookcase to 1 medium and 1 small.
My husband and I have at least 15 boxes of books sitting in our garage. They have been there for the past 18 months since we moved to a smaller place and don’t have room for them. We both have digital book readers now, so these books are next on my decluttering list. I am planning to force my husband to go through them all with me this weekend and we will donate most to the library. I can’t wait! :-)
Francine, your book The Joy of Less is the first one I purchased for my Kindle! I loved it and there were several times while reading it that I had to stop and get up and pull something out of the closet to get rid of! I am addicted to decluttering now!
My donated 100+ books skipped themselves on over to the local library yesterday- hooray! However, admittedly releasing them was very, very hard- which I’m now psychoanalyzing to see why that is.
But the good news is that the books are now gone, except for my favorite 61 books. I placed just a few of the thin coffee table books from my travels as pictures effectively on the back of the bookshelf, facing front. The bookcase looks happy, serene and light now.
My progress in letting go is thanks to your ebook, Francine. I had no idea that I could get the Kindle app on my *computer*. Thanks for that tip, which allowed me to download your ebook.
Your book is more than inspirational – it is transformative! I will have to share later how much has improved around here thanks to you.
I come from a family of book lovers. My parents are in the process of getting rid of decades of stuff, including books. Recently I spoke with my sister and discovered that we both had books overflowing our shelves. Her solution was to have someone come and give an estimate to build shelves into her living room. Mine was to donate several boxes to the Friends of the Library. Your site and those of the other minimalists I’ve been reading lately helped me let go — thanks!
I have learned to love libraries again and I am trying to practice non attachment to books. The only one’s I have left are some current college books and reference. I find it’s been fun and educational for my 4 year old to go to the library with me. : )
I looked up the service that Tessa Hill suggested. It looks really great, but most sellers seem to be limited to accepting books from the United States. Does anyone know of a good place to sell books in Canada?
thanks,
-Jon
I also have rediscovered the library, and that’s the first place I look for books I want to read now. I’ve donated a bunch to the library(wasn’t really counting) and gave a bunch to my mom to pass along to a friend who runs a drug recovery house where the guys read a lot there. I decided I didn’t need to keep anything the library has b/c I could check it out anytime, so that allowed me to get rid of tons of books. I’m still working on it though. I want to be able to fit all of my book on one bookshelf eventually. I’m not there yet but I’m close. I like the idea or arranging them by color though, I might try that.
Books can be very challenging to detach from. Although I have given a box of books away so far, the major haul of what’s left will be next on my list of minimalism. Right now I’m just going to enjoy the clutter free home that I’ve created this past year. I think the before and after picture is amazing! Congrats :)
Decluttering my books is on my list of things to do, but keeps get pushed farther and farther down that list. It’s difficult for me to part with them, although I know some I will probably never read again. One weekend I’ll get fed up and just get it over with. But for now they sit in a spare bedroom in my house that hardly ever is used. So they aren’t too much of a bother, more mental clutter than anything.
I’m finding your site to be more and more motivating every day!
My bookcase was the impetus to go minimalist in my life. I woke up one Sunday morning, looked at the bookcase, and said to myself that I didn’t need any of these books. That’s when I knew I had to take action.
I started with 150+ books and now I’m down to about 30. My goal is to get to ten or less physical books, not including my high school yearbooks.
I’m in the process writing a blog series about how I liberated my books and how others can do it. The first two posts are already up and I have a couple of more ready to go. I might make it into an e-book depending on its popularity.
Wow–very impressive before and after photos. I recently weeded my books down to ten print books. I still use the library for I do enjoy reading print books but I’ve also started reading some ebooks on my ipod touch. I might spring for a bit larger ebook reader in the future. Thanks for sharing your bookshelf makeover!
My problem is that I have 5 kids, 3 of whom are grown and gone but we still have a large collection of children’s books. I have given away many and am continuing to winnow them down but a lot are still left. My dh and I also own books although we are cutting those down. It is tough to get rid of books that belong to other people who are part of your household and extended family who don’t want to be minimalists.
My current project is to scan the few recipes I use from almost a full shelf of cookbooks and then keep just a few of the cook books that are really used or really special.
We are a military family so we move frequently and I often have the task of packing, unpacking, organizing, and maintaining many bookshelves worth of books that were read but now collect dust just-in-case they are reviewed again. When we started to scale down our things, my first stop was the bookcase. I reduced my collection of my personal books to a handful selling them on half.com and donating them to the library. Now, I count three books total for myself, two books that were my grandmothers, a cookbook and book of poetry, and one Shel Silverstein book given to me as a teenager by a great friend. The pleasure of borrowing books from my library is a personal favorite joy and because of the closeness of my library in walking distance I can visit often and I have joined the library book club meeting new friends and discovering many new books! Several months ago, my husband went through all of his books and any book that he couldn’t find on Kindle he donated. He still has about 100 books and we are discussing donating those books to the library if he can find them in the library catalog. I dream of the day that we move and I don’t pack or unpack any boxes of books!
After a lifetime of being a reader I have now divested myself of 4 large bookcases (and their contents), 2 medium size bookcases (ditto) and have now started to work on my collection of cookbooks (love to cook but don’t need them all)
Kept a few special childhood books as memories and books relevant to my current interests.
I can always go online for information and use my Kindle for books that I would only read once anyway (which truthfully were most of them)
My fellow book loving friends are finding it very scary watching me do this.
I keep reminding them that the donations to our library system have helped other people enjoy these books.
Especially people who cannot afford to buy books.
What a lovely way to reduce visual clutter. I never would have thought of that!!! It’s a lovely makeover.
As for getting rid of books–AMEN!! We have pared down to only our most used books (about 20 or so.) We get the rest from the library.
Last week I was all set to ‘upgrade’ my small shelf to a larger one. However, reading your blog gave me a better alternative – downsize my book collection. Didn’t realize how much satisfaction that brings!
I am a little disappointed that e-book ownership has become the common solution to book clutter, as opposed to the library.
Personally, I always look for a book at the library first. If they don’t have it and I REALLY want to read it I buy it. If it is a good book, I donate it to the library. Financially, I come out about the same as selling the book used and I’ve basically gifted it to anyone else in the county who wants to read it. If I want to read it again, I know where to find it.
I look forward to the day when gifting ebooks to the library is an easier process.
I would not want to get rid of all my books.
I bought kind of and e-book reader (Kindle Fire), to be able to read cookbooks in color that I found to expensive to buy in paper just to ease my curiosity about them.
Two issues I have with the reader are:
1. I do not have too much space, but compared to that I have a lot of books that are not available anymore (not in print let alone digital).
Most of these will never be digitalized due to little readership.
2. The reader itself.
I am no “technology person”.
I had a CD player in the 90s, bought some CDs most of which are not playable anymore. I still have some cassettes that probably will not be playable for long, either.
How lon will e-Book readers exist?
How long will e-book-readers exist that can display the e-books currently available?
How long will e-books exist, i.e. when will the data file be damaged and needed to be replaced if one wants to read it?
Will I have to buy every book again in 10 or 20 years, because the format has changed or the current readers won’t display my e-books?
What if I build a digital collection only to find that the most important books to be are no longer in print and no longer available in a data format that can be shown on current readers?
Above all:
What about ALL the money wasted on potentially short-lived data files?
(Whereas the paper books on my shelf will probably still be there and readable after I die)?
Theses thought keep me from buying to many e-books and other than the cheapest ones and from replacing books that are important to me digitally.
One more thing:
I do collect cookbooks with special food photography. On the “Kindle Fire” (what a stupid name!!) these pictures are displayed very small and in an unattractive way. So even though it is one of the few (and the cheapest) option of buying cheaper digital books while still displaying their color photos, it is no real replacement for books that are important to me from my collection.
I gave away many books that I had been keeping to read ” someday” and never did. More aspirational clutter. I am keeping only a few favorites.
So much is gone that I don’t miss. So much will soon go and then I will have empty spaces in my cabinets. There is lightness to be found when the heavy, awkward things are gone,
Most of the books in my bookshelves are my mother’s. I usually go to the library at least once a week. I have a few craft books which I will keep but I am planning to get rid of 3 bookcases when I no longer store my Mom’s books.
The link to Barry’s blog above goes to the Home Depot website. Just a head’s up.
I like to look at the big, beautiful art books. I love to check them out from the public library. Tiffany jewels, treasures in British castles, and beautiful gardens are also great to look at. I keep instructions for the crafts I love. The library has movies, TV series and many wonderful treasures. I am able to enjoy so much while owning very little. I encourage my friends to get rid of their junk. I use the strategy suggested by the minimalist s.