The moment I became a mom, I discovered I must’ve forgotten to ask a lot of important questions in life up to that point. I hadn’t traveled that road before, and I was scared as hell thinking I’d fail.
I was determined not to fail at the adventure of being a housewife and a mother. So, I did what every good book-loving addict does, I started a library of self-help books.
I couldn’t ask my mother how to do stuff…don’t get me wrong, I love(d) her dearly…but, she wasn’t a tidy housekeeper. She didn’t learn it from her mom either. I couldn’t learn from her other than it was a history I had to break free from.
When I was growing up, I was the one who did the cleaning. And organizing. In the process, I learned what did not work well. I was actually kind of addicted to it and that addiction continued on in my married life as well.
I thought I was seriously addicted. So I started reading…and reading…and reading… I never became a Marie Kondo, I’m more like a Dubious Minimalist™. But I do have her book prominently placed in my office as a reminder that a more organized life is possible.
At that time in life when I was learning, I was on a mission to discover the best way to deal with organizing the stuff so that it wouldn’t look like clutter, not how to discard stuff. I was a saver, just like my mom. A packrat, yes I was. It drove me mad some days.
So, of course, I took time out to fantasize about being a bounty hunter.
Then, years later, my mom’s dementia prevented her from living in her home, so all of her belongings came to my house. When we sold her house, we had to flip it first. All of her stuff came to our house to organize and sell and discard in due time. She had a library full of books she inherited and contributed to over the years. It was a lot of books. The shelves came along, thank goodness – we needed a space to store them.
Well, this weekend, 9 years later, I finally decided our library in the garage had to be downsized. Again.
We’ve had several thrift sales over the years, and we always try to sell more books. We even donated a bunch a few years ago too. But then I downsized my own library as I remodeled my office. I filled our garage library, again.
I encouraged our youngest daughter this past weekend to go through it one more time to make her final selections. A box full went with her. It was such a small dent, though.
Then it was my turn to find the rainbow leading to freedom from books.
First I had Mr. research which entity would benefit from the donations. Our local library has a Friends of the Library Book Sale every July. Score me – 9 boxes were filled and loaded in my Mr.’s truck and on the road to the library yesterday morning.
The local memory care assisted living will receive the encyclopedia sets – no meanness intended, but the elderly do remember encyclopedias…yes, they do! And they’ll smile when they see historical things from the past.
The rest will be recycled.
True to me, a few books were rescued and kept on a shelf to read before I discard them. I’ll donate them too. I have a deadline before the book sale in July.
Besides…it just doesn’t seem right to buy a book, donate it, and then jump in the car, travel down the road to the library just to rent the same exact book I donated?!
Post Inspired by Frank’s prompt at Dutch Goes the Photo on his Tuesday Photography Challenge – Road
PS – Do confess, you have a library in your garage too, right? What type of books do you like to read? Have you read Janet’s books about Stephanie Plum, or do you ever dream of being a bounty hunter?
Honestly Shelley, I don’t like to read much unless it’s short and of specific interests. My garage is your basic man cave with tools and such. 👍🏻😎
LOL – now I’m going to tease you-you read my blog posts, never knowing what you’ll find her and they’re rarely short! 😉 Your man cave and garage are perfect for you.
Well, that’s my dad’s cave in Michigan. I do read your posts Shelley but I don’t find them too long at all. Lack of patience for reading books and such, they just bore me unless it’s science fiction or something technical in my area of understanding.
Ah, your dad’s cave has quite the collection in it. Nice for photo ops! Thank you for reading my posts, I appreciate you doing so. I think it is great that you know what you prefer to read or not and that you spend time doing what you love to do – photography!
To start I am and have always been a voracious reader.
I started downsizing before we moved. Most books were donated. I had started using an e-reader and borrowing from the library.
I havens’t bought a book in years. Well,,,,,except for cookbooks, they seem to sneak into my house.
Oh, and I have an addiction for travel books….
We also have a large library in our building.
LOL, Jackie, you sound just like the perfect book lover. Well balanced and still able to sneak in those special books when needed 🙂
I have four boxes of books that got moved from Ga. to Ala. and then to Iowa. I still have them, still boxed. I need to do what you did. Good job.
I feel better knowing I’m not alone Anita – thank you for sharing!
It’s hard throwing things away, especially books. I still have my college chemistry books. Each time I try to throw them away, I remember that I bought some of them instead of food the week before classes started, and I put them back on the shelf.
Good luck with the downsizing. A little here, a little there…
God I thought I was the only person in the world who still had their college chemistry books! I just can’t seem to part with them, so they remain in boxes in the basement, souvenirs/reminders of a time when I was smarter!
You’re in great company with Dan!
LOL – wow, I’m impressed that you still have those books. I bet you could write a pretty darn interesting blog post about what you no longer use as needed material in your everyday life that you learned from those books. But…on second thought, skip that, enjoy your blogging break – just relax instead!! 😉
Shelley, I wish I lived closer to you, so I could browse in your library. What an impressive collection of books! I’ve thinned out my books over the years to a few shelves in the basement, and one upstairs, but then I read so much I mostly get books from the library.
Me too – I’d happily hand some over to you! 🙂
Oh my goodness. I am having a flashback looking at your photos of all those books. Before we moved, we had the same challenge. I swear the books would reproduce on the shelves as fast as we (thought) we were getting rid of them. Donations to a local waiting room of a community clinic for kids made me feel better about getting rid of the hundreds of children’s books we had accumulated from our pasts and our kids’ – hard, though.
LOL! It’s amazing how books create those feelings in us. Yes – ours multiple too…it’s the weirdest thing! I like that idea for donation sites…hmm…now you’ve got me thinking again.
I love books Shelley, so I understand how hard it is to get rid of them although my library is pretty small. My brother, however is a book hoarder. He has 10’s of thousands in storage units and other places. It’s a huge problem.
Have you heard about the Little Free Library project? I’ve thought about starting one in our neighborhood. Would be a good way to get rid of books without destroying them. https://littlefreelibrary.org/
Books are so easy to fall in love with. Yikes, that’s a lot of stored books. I’m not that bad, yet. Yes, we have those little free libraries in the area, we’re going to drop off some of the books there too. Thank you for sharing the link and your thoughts, I so appreciate it!
Our library has book sales too and I usually save the books I read to donate to them. I must admit that I go to the sales to look for books I can repurpose as scrapbook albums or junk journals, in addition to books that I want to read. I also have a collection of Nancy Drew books that I’ve had since I was a kid and it is fun to add to that.
Aw, Janet – we’re kindred spirits. I have to plan something else the day of the sale or I’ll be there buying more books than I donated. That’s awesome that you still have your Nancy Drew books! I think I have one on the shelf………!
Oh my gosh, Shelley, I have libraries everywhere; the garage, the attic, the living room, my bedroom, The Girl’s room, The Boy’s room, even a closet full of thousands of comic books at my parents’ house that I collected from my early teens through my mid-twenties. I have indeed fantasized about being a bounty hunter, but it’s been a while. I’m much too content as a PO to fantasize much these days about anything other than being a successful, well-paid writer! I’ve never read anything by Janet Evanovich.
I like to read many different kinds of books and try to read or audit equal parts fiction and nonfiction. i like classic and modern literary fiction, Southern fiction, sci-fi/fantasy especially horror and have recently begun to gain a greater appreciation for high-quality memoir, which though technically is nonfiction, I consider to be in a gray area between fiction and non- given the unreliability of memory and our innate, almost pathological need to present ourselves in a favorable or sympathetic light. As for nonfiction, I like history, religion, history of religion, science, social science, politics/political issues, a whole bunch of different stuff. Ohh, I like poetry too, especially Billy Collins.
Denny, I’m not surprised by your confessions of libraries hidden in your home. ;-). Your blog name fits you so well. If you ever get a chance to read JE’s Stephanie Plum books, you might get a kick out of LuLu or Grandma Mazur. They’d be interesting characters in the court room. I’m impressed with your list of interests as far as reading goes…I’m neons behind you! But I love a good book, and a fun story like you share on your blog. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!!
Oh, the hardest thing to part with for me is books. One thing I fell in love with when we first saw our house was a wall of built in bookshelves in the great room. And I have three (yeah, I know) bookcases in my office, as well as a couple on the lower level and one in the piano room. I have such a time parting with travel books, photography books, novels I’ve loved, poetry, writing books from workshops I’ve taken, etc.etc.etc. Oy. I regularly purge them, but they seem to keep multiplying. One reason might be that our local indy bookstore has a GREAT used section, so while I take book there to sell and donate books to our local Friends of the Library, I usually end up spending my bookstore credit on – you guessed it – more books. Ha!
Realistically speaking, I doubt I’ll live long enough to read them all (some for the first time!), but they looked SO good and I know I’ll get to them some day. The other issue is that I keep putting my name on the reserve list of the library for new books that look good, since I’m trying not to buy more books. And library books keep me from getting to my own collection. But I do love looking at them, so there is that.
Kudos to you for all the book work…it’s a big job.
Aw – I’m so smitten with your stories of how you love books too! Therefore, Laurel – you’ve been crowned the queen of books in my book! 🙂 You’ve also made me interested in going to the Friends of the Library sale…! 😉
I have many books in tubs that my mom and I bought together at Waldnbooks and all those books my mom read but I didn’t. I took the bus for years and was an avid reader, then after Robb and I left the Firm and went to a new office, I had to take two buses each way to work and so started riding with someone to/from work. I hated it as my reading took a real hit and I’ve never been able to read at night without falling asleep, whether I was sitting up straight in an uncomfortable chair or laying in bed reading. I gave away all my college books about ten years after college, even all my journalism books, and I was a literature minor so had tons of books, all given to the library. My parents subscribed to “National Geographic” magazine for years and there were just too many of them so my father got a huge box and took them over to the library – they never even wanted them. I don’t have an e-reader but wouldn’t mind having one to download books from the library sometime.
Thank you for sharing your story about your books and your reading. I can tell you love reading – your writing shows it. My mom had a ton of the “National Geographic” magazines too. The libraries must get tons of donations. When Mr. dropped off the books, the librarians were grateful that we had reviewed their lists of what to donate and not donate – one of them said, “You wouldn’t believe the garbage books some people donate that we just have to find a way to discard.”
I like my Kindle, but I’m still a sucker for holding the real hard cover books. But, it fits better on my treadmill so that I do adore about it. I need to look into e-reading from the library. And I need to go there more often, instead of buying books that I’ll have to donate later!
Thank you Shelley. I used to love to read and when retired, I hope to get back to it.
My parents were avid readers and many times it would be quiet in the house – all three of us reading. We must have done that “National Geographic” donation years ago – my father did it and he’s been gone since 1984. We got the subscription in 1966 and used to watch the TV specials as well. I didn’t know they published a list of what they want/don’t want at a library, but our library had a used book sale every year, so perhaps they take all books and use some to sell. Our library is part of an inter-loan system with two other counties in the Tri-County area, so you can get quite a few titles to pick from. I didn’t even know that they had this service until a fellow bus rider told me about it (we still keep in touch) – she said the Kindle had already paid for itself from what she allotted herself for her “book allowance” previously. I understand that some of the Kindles are the audio variety so you have the option on Amazon or other places to get the Kindle audio version. That’d be nice for multi-tasking but I’ve heard people who have Audible say that if traffic is busy or dicey, they have a difficult time concentrating on the book, or are at a good point in the book, and stay there in the car longer to find out what’s next.
Libraries are great, I need to utilize ours more often. I have an audible account, that I don’t use enough. I do adore my little Kindle when I use it. So many ways to ‘read’ – it’s a wonder we get anything else done in the world! 😉
I read a lot when I took the bus – and it was like walking at the Park and enjoying the solitude. I would hate to get on the bus and someone chatty sat next to me. I sometimes opened my book before I even sat down to deter conversation. I suppose that sounds rude, but a good book is a treasure to enjoy and keep your rapt attention until the next time you open it. I do miss reading a lot. I may have mentioned to you that my mom and I reserved all the new hardcover books of the authors we liked from the library. We reserved them together, so that we each got one week (back-to-back) for reading the book. My mom was home during the day, so she would get through the book before “her week” was up, so I’d get the rest of her time plus my week. We did that with best sellers for years, but we bought our own paperback books as well to read in between. We subscribed to a ton of magazines on top of it. Obviously before walking and blogging, but I got outside stuff done, worked full-time, and used to watch TV back then as well. I’ve not watched TV since January 2010. I need to budget and balance my time better. I have piles of AARP magazines for the past five years, if not more. SMH.
LOL – I’m the same way on the bus, I’d rather read, it makes me look busy! That’s wonderful mom and daughter time by sharing the art of reading together. Wow — 9 years free of TV. That’s awesome. You shall never be bored with all you’ve got going on. I’m amazed at what you get done!!
Yes, she’d get through those new release quickly to give me plenty of time to finish without having to take it back and renew it – since it was a new release, you could not renew it then, you went to the bottom of the list til the other folks got to read it first. I still have a digital TV I got for my mom when she was confined to bed, but it used to freeze all the time, even with the flat antenna so I just put it away. I need to budget my time better. I actually have already written both weekend posts so that I can get some things done in the house this rainy weekend. I won’t look at the other pictures I have taken this week to step away from the computer just a little.
No worries – you’re not missing much at all when it comes to TV watching. Your pre-planning for the weekend posts already impresses me! I should do that. I hope your weekend brings you some relaxation and time to read a book.
I was talking to my boss when he was driving home tonight an I don’t know what made him say they have cancelled their cable and just stream or do Hulu now. We have ugly weather on tape for this weekend so I will hunker down inside and try to right this (messy) ship.