A graphic image of a desk and shelves with lots of books on them

Episode 240 – How to declutter books

If you're a book lover than the very last thing you want to do is touch your precious book collection. Today we're going to talk about why books are so difficult to declutter and the questions to ask yourself to break this project down into manageable chunks.

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Transcript of this podcast episode

[00:00:00] Ingrid: If you are a book lover, the last thing you want to do is touch your precious book collection. Today we're going to talk about why books are so difficult to declutter, and the questions to ask yourself to break down this project into manageable chunks. 

Well, hello listeners. We've got a treat for you today. It's a topic that we've never talked about before, and that is books. Lesley, books, oh, why are these hard to declutter, for some people, not for everyone.

[00:00:36] Lesley: I know, I think it's been one that, you know, people have been wanting us to talk about, but it's so complicated, right? And so we don't know whether we can do it justice in half an hour, but we're going to give it our best shot right, Ingrid? So it is something that we talk about a lot in the membership, isn't it? If you are a book lover, then you've got to kind of wrestle these books away from people, right? They're like kicking and screaming, no, leave my books and I think the reason for that, that we've found over the years is that people really consider books to be a collection right? And whenever anybody views anything as a collection, it's really difficult to get that breakthrough that will allow people to look at things as individual items rather than a collection. 

And so other things like that I'm talking about is, oh, don't touch my shoes. People see shoes as a collection. People see DVDs as a collection, CDs as a collection, albums as a collection. But once you start to allow yourself to break this down into something beyond a collection, that's when you can start to make progress.

And that's what we're going to talk about today, really. We need to look at those individual. Components that make up that collection and not see it as people consider it to be like breaking something apart, right?

[00:01:46] Ingrid: Well, you know what it is, most of the time that people have bookcases and the books are all stacked in there, they've been in that same position for years and years and years. So they almost see it as part of their furniture, as part of their home, and it's like, you can take books off a shelf, you know, that can happen.

But because I think because books can become a bit stale when they're in the same place and it just becomes part of the furniture in a room.

[00:02:15] Lesley: But I think that by decluttering books, you can really rediscover things that you had lost. I think even if we don't declutter any, and I think that we probably can with the things that we're going to talk talk about today, I think even if you just rearrange them. If you, um, reorganise them, if you recategorise them, you can discover things that you had forgotten about. Right. Because I think the thing is with books is that they are, they take up a lot of space. So if you've got like a standard bookshelf, you know, like a, I don't know, like an IKEA bookcase or something, that's probably going to be one shelf is like 20 books. If you double stack them, which we're going to talk about later, that's 40 books, right?

It's a lot of books. And as soon as you start taking them out, you can really free a lot of space up. It doesn't take much to start freeing up space and to start being able to look at your books with a fresh pair of eyes.

[00:03:05] Ingrid: On a side note, Lesley, books never seem that many when they're on a bookshelf, but when you then start to take an, you are going to enter a couple of bookshelves, it's suddenly like, where did all these piles come from? It didn't look that many when they're all in the bookcase. Sometimes neatly, sometimes all higgledy-piggledy and double and messy and disorganised.

But when you start to take them off, it can be quite an overwhelming feeling when you're like suddenly, oh wow. There is so much more. It didn't look as much when it was on the shelves, but now it's often on the floor and for me to sort out, it suddenly feels a much bigger project than I thought it was going to be.

[00:03:47] Lesley: And I think there's a couple of things that I want to say about that. I think first of all, the time that you, when you really get confronted with your books, Ingrid, is when you are moving house, right? And you see just how many boxes are required for the books that you've got in your bookcases when you move house.

So that's a big one and I think the other really important thing is that because it can be so overwhelming, cus these volumes are so huge, once you start taking them out of their natural position, let's say on a shelf. It's overwhelming and so you need to really break it down.

So what we're never suggesting is go through the whole of your book collection all in one go. 

So let's talk about this Ingrid. Where do we sit in the book loving category?

[00:04:31] Ingrid: Whew. That is a difficult question, Lesley. I love books. I love reading books. But I don't love them enough to have 12 bookcases in my house, you see? So I think there's a difference as well. Some people love books and want to keep every book they've ever read in their lives, in their house because they suddenly feel it's part of them.

I'm not like that. I have a Kindle. I have hard, let's call them hard copy books, like paper books, but it's not like if it's a really good read, I will hang on to the thing. Oh, I'm going to read, read that again. That was a fantastic book, but if I've read it, I'm like, okay, that's fine. It can go, then I can easily declutter it as well.

[00:05:15] Lesley: Do we think then that there is two different types of people? Well, there's more than two types of different, but in the book reading world, people who read books, love to read books and people who love to keep books.

[00:05:28] Ingrid: Um, Yes. But I think there's subcategories. I think there's also people who have lots of books with books they haven't read yet, so they don't even know if they'll love them yet, but I still can't let them go. Or they've read them half and then they don't like it, but they still can't let it go. There's lots of going on there, Lesley.

[00:05:46] Lesley: I still think that there are people who are avid book readers, right, who do not have a problem with book clutter in their home because they are very committed to recycling books, to passing books on, to having things on Kindle, listen to things on audible, uh, all of those kinds of things. I think the two things don't need to be the same, and I think sometimes they can get confused as being the same.

[00:06:10] Ingrid: Yeah. I think it, you can't assume, I think that just because somebody loves a book, they've got a house full of books.

[00:06:17] Lesley: No, and, and neither if somebody's got a house full of books, can you assume that they're reading those books.

[00:06:23] Ingrid: Exactly. I know. That's what I'm saying. There's a lot of emotions when you start with even bringing up the subject. If you see, you know, in a house, there's a lot of books. That's not something I would start right away with. I would definitely do other areas in a client's house first before I, I broach the subject about decluttering books because you kind of have to know yourself or know decline a little bit and, and where they sit on the, on the book decluttering scale.

[00:06:53] Lesley: Yeah, exactly. So for that reason, you know, as an example, when we have our reset your home roadmap in the membership and books is long way down, right? We've done loads of other stuff before we even get to books because of the emotions involved in books. And because of this idea of breaking this collection down and prising every single book out of its rightful place in its collection and into a charity bag or passed onto another person.

So, It's tricky, right? We're saying it's tricky if you're, there's some people it's not, some people they've not got a problem with books. I can literally go through them. I declutter them all the time, send them to charity shop, and I've got a throughput of books. So we're talking about people where it really is tricky and so how do we then get to a point where we can break this collection down?

That's the important thing. I think we have to commit to breaking it down and to going one thing at a time. So first things first, we need to take those things off a shelf. We're very, very, big believers in the fact that once something is off a shelf or out of a wardrobe or out of a cupboard, it's more difficult emotionally to put it back in.

So you've got to make a positive decision to put it back in. And so if you then leaf through your books on your bookshelf and go, like that one, I like that one. You've not physically taken it out and held it in your hand and really evaluated for how it makes you feel at that time. 

So first things first. One shelf at a time. Yeah. And all of the books on that shelf need to come off that shelf. You wipe the bookcase down and then you make positive decisions about what you are going to keep. Right.

[00:08:25] Ingrid: Yes, absolutely. And it is so true. I've seen this exactly what you're describing now. I've seen this with a client. They're like, but they're so nicely on the shelf. Let me just look through them. And it's like, it's not the same. They have to come off, they have to earn their place back. And once when a book is on its shelf, it feels like it's deserves to be there, has to be there. While if you take it off, you actually have to yourself, make a conscious decision. Does this book deserve a place in my home? Is it allowed to take up the space, the energy and effort that it takes to, to keep this book and, and, and keep it in clean and tidy and organised and all of that for it to be be put back on the shelf.

[00:09:12] Lesley: Definitely. So let's dig in. We have made our decision. We have taken our books off our one shelf. We have put them on the floor or on the table or wherever we're keeping them, and we need to start making some decisions. And so here are some simple questions that we can ask ourselves to decide whether or not a book is a keeper.

[00:09:30] Ingrid: Yes, and the first one is do I actually have a copy or are there multiple copies of the same book? We see that all the time, don't we, Lesley? Especially if a certain writer is a favorite writer, and people start to know that around you. So they start giving you this writer or this author as gifts or presents, and then you end up with duplicates. So sometimes we find multiple books that are similar.

[00:09:59] Lesley: Exactly, and I think it's sometimes this is as it evolves, right in grid, so we don't always know it, but then later on we go, oh, I'm sure I've seen that before. Exactly, so it's not always, you can see it straight away the first time, but you might see that later on and know that you've got that second copy, and then it's just all about deciding whether you need any copy or deciding whether you want to keep the best copy and what that looks like for you.

I think another reason why it's so important to take things off a bookshelf is what's the quality of that book, right? Some of them are a bit smelly. Some of them are falling apart. The pages come out depending on how old they are. Sometimes the pages stick together and is that something that we want in our lives?

And the answer to that might be, yes, I'm quite happy with my pages sticking together book, and my, um, you know, the, the fact that the pages have fallen out enhances the book for me. And that's just the nature of it. But it's important to take it out and to assess it for what it is.

[00:10:54] Ingrid: Especially children's books, Lesley, very sticky. A lot of, very lot of crumbles, half torn out pages, you know, ears on the corners of the book. Do you want to put that back or is it almost read so much that it's falling apart? That actually if it's a firm family favorite?

Ah, there's copy number two that we've gathered along the way. Actually, the other one that's falling apart, we can let go of,

[00:11:22] Lesley: And I think it's really important to be able to assess these books. We need to be able to, you know, cause I can't always remember if I look at a book I'm like, Have I read that? You know, it's like anything you can't really remember, can you? Especially as we get older, did I read that? I think I've read that. Have I read some of it? Have I read most of it? Sometimes it depends on people use bookmarks, people bend the corners of pages over, all those kind of things that would give us some kind of clue of our kind of journey with that book, right? So, you know, have we read it or whatever. 

But I think we need to take it off. We need to look at the blurb maybe on the back of the book to see whether it is something that we have read before and or to decide whether it's something that we feel that we would read again. Because surely our tastes change. You know, what we liked in our twenties and thirties is not necessarily going to be the same as we like now, so we need to be able to assess it and perhaps we need a little bit more information. So we need to look at that back cover, front cover and see whether or not it is something that we feel that we have read already or that we would choose to read again.

[00:12:23] Ingrid: That is the nice thing about a Kindle actually, Lesley, because when you read a book you can see that it goes to a hundred percent and then I move it out of my to read list or or to my unread list, to my, to I have read this book list. I love that. Then I'm like, yeah, I've finished that. So it always stays in there, and then I can read it again if I like.

[00:12:47] Lesley: Do you know what the, what the problem is with, for me, I think, cause I moved on, you know, I started off with physical books and then quickly moved on to a Kindle. Then I went, went on to Audible and then I loved what Audible did. Cause I found it's quite sort of, It's almost quite passive, really, you know, listening to a book on Audible, and I feel like it really brings it to life.

It also became, uh, the thing that made me go to sleep every, every night. So it became a sedative almost but then because I liked Audible so much, I then quickly moved on to podcasts and I've not gone back.

[00:13:15] Ingrid: Oh.

[00:13:16] Lesley: I just have not read a book for ages. I just love a podcast. And you know, the reason why I love it and all of the, all the podcasts I listen to are all, well, they're all about people, aren't they?

Anyway, is because I love autobiographies and a podcast is almost like a mini autobiography, you know? Well, the type of podcast that I listen to anyway. And so I think, I don't know. You know, I'm kind of like, I really need to go back to reading a physical book. You know, when I was on holiday recently, I was like, I need to come off my phone and so I'm going to take a physical book and try to force myself away from my device and it just didn't work.

I went back to my podcast, so I don't know whether I'm going to go back. Is that, is that weird?

[00:13:52] Ingrid: So you can declutter every book in your home there. Lesley, you got nothing left.

[00:13:56] Lesley: Exactly. Exactly. So I think it's important to think about that and it's important to, you know, we were talking about the bookmarks and things like that to see where you got up to in that book and what was it that made you pull it down.

[00:14:08] Ingrid: Mm-hmm. Yes. Because why are we reading books that we actually not enjoying? How many books do we find? Oh, with a bookmark about 20 pages in or halfway through or, and it's like, oh, oh, I didn't like that book at all. Shall we declutter it? Oh, no, I have to finish it. I'm like, Why, why, why would you spend your time on, on something that you don't enjoy at all?

[00:14:33] Lesley: I think, you know, I think it's, it is the same as like a box set on TV. I think it's because we feel like we've invested so much time into it already that we need to finish the job.

[00:14:41] Ingrid: Yeah. Yeah,

[00:14:43] Lesley: And that, that's why, well, I've already read 300 pages and wasted this many hours of my life. I may as well just continue with, otherwise, it's a complete waste. And, and I'm with you, which is if something's rubbish, you need to make a decision fairly quickly into the process and

[00:14:58] Ingrid: Abandon. Abandon.

[00:15:00] Lesley: abandon book.

[00:15:01] Ingrid: Yes. Abandon the book. But yeah, I mean, you know, we, we do, we do get given books as well, you know, as presents that we might think, oh, I love it that you love it, but it's not my cup of tea. You know, you are, you are allowed to declutter these things. You have our permission to let it go.

[00:15:22] Lesley: Now one of the types of book that absolutely when we are decluttering books with clients, which are difficult to let go, but once you make a kind of overarching decision, make a huge difference is books from university, medical books, academic books from. Times gone by. Now, it's not for me to say that all of those things should go and should be like go off, but there are some that are outdated practices, particularly in the medical field and the business world in particular.

A lot of these things are outdated and you're not going to return back to them depending on how you now utilise your information. A lot of people were like, never doing that, never ditching those books. And often that's because they've become sentimental books and not ones that we use as reference, but those are definite ones where, because they're typically bigger as well, so they take up more space.

And once you make a decision to look for those really outdated books, then you can let them go. And that's something where we see great success in is in terms of volumes.

[00:16:28] Ingrid: Yes. Uh, I'm, I'm, I'm glad to say I think there's two books left in this house from our studies, and I think they're both my husbands and not mine. I was like, I can let it go. I'm ready. I'm ready. I don't need this anymore.

[00:16:40] Lesley: Yeah, I've got about four books actually. Um, I mean, I don't keep loads and loads of books actually. I've got about four books that are from my, um, university days. So, um, I studied languages at university, um, German and Dutch, and I have my dictionaries, but they're sentimental, right? They're sentimental books because I spent four years leafing through the dictionary. I wonder if language students use dictionaries now. I bet they don't. I bet they use an online

[00:17:03] Ingrid: I recently decluttered and, uh, our members will know this. I, uh, decluttered a dictionary and I know that can be quite like, Really, why would you do that? But I think people just Google everything these days. I mean, I, I, I, it wouldn't even come to mind when we're now on our phones and on the computer all the time to actually get a dictionary out and find something. So your dictionaries must be sentimental, Lesley?

[00:17:27] Lesley: Yeah. Hundred percent. They're sentimental. You know, I'm talking about dictionaries. You do everything online now, and you have to recognise what you do do online. So, um, when I was on holiday, I was playing Scrabble with my husband, which kind of, you know, it was, it was a good game. I'm glad to say that I won in the end, which he was not very happy about.

Now there's a Scrabble dictionary, right? So you just go online and look at whether or not it's a word and it says yes or no to the word, which kind of, I don't know whether that takes the fun out of it a little bit. Cause sometimes it's just about, well, I think it's a word. Am I going to let that pass? Am I going to challenge it?

Or that kind of stuff. Do you know mean? But some of the ones I'm like, that is not a word. He tried to pass that ax. So he said ax as in to ax something. I'm like, mm, okay. And I, so ax was a word. I was like, okay, I'll give you that. I can understand that. But then he put axs thinking it was a verb.

I'm like, no, absolutely not. That's. It's, I'm like, no, it isn't. And so straight away Scrabble dictionary online and if it comes, yes or no. So I think that we have to also think about when we're looking at reference books and dictionaries and things like that, whether, how we actually look at the information and whether we need that anymore.

Same with A to Zs, same with Atlas, all of these things. How do we utilise information and do we need the physical copy of a book to allow us to do those things?

[00:18:53] Ingrid: I've got another category, Lesley, that might be up for decluttering. And that's those novelty books like with, um, you know, the, the 10 things. Uh, I don't know, you've got all these funny titles and dad

[00:19:08] Lesley: The ten things, you mean that the whole basis of many of our podcasts, novel talent, novelty.

[00:19:13] Ingrid: 10 reasons Mums Drink Gin or something like that, you know what I mean? Or dad jokes or.

[00:19:19] Lesley: It doesn't take me long, long to come up with 10 reasons why mums drink gin. I can tell you I don't need a book for that, but.

[00:19:27] Ingrid: You get all these weird books with like jokes and things or I don't know, they, they or something with the mug and with Hot Chocolate. That's little booklet and it's like, Why, why are you, have you ever actually, are you going to read this stuff or was it more like a little fun, novelty gift that people gave you, um, to make you laugh or, you know, I think look through all these little bits and bobs that are lying about there. There's some, there's some strange books out there. Let's be honest.

[00:19:53] Lesley: Definitely. And so some of these can definitely go. So these are kind of all the types of things that we've spoken about now are kind of no-brainers really. They're quite simple decisions once we allow ourselves to delve into them, aren't they? I think when we start to wrestle with our decisions a little bit sometimes it's about, do I know somebody who would love this book more than me?

I think there's things like that. So if we are overwhelmed with books, which many, many people are, um, it's about finding the right outlook for your book. That really makes a massive difference, doesn't it? If you can find, you know, uh, I know in the place that I lived, there was a free book shop, you feel as if this is going to the right place.

Just a community bookshop or a charity that you'll like to use, or a refuge or to a school if it's children's books. All of those things make you feel so much better about what you're doing because we've been brought up, particularly our generation, to believe that books are special, which they are. They're educational, they're inspirational, they're entertainment, all of those things. And so it's hard to kind of let go of something that should bring that into your life and that's why people really wrestle with books. We're brought up to really revere books, I think, aren't we?

[00:20:59] Ingrid: I think again, Lesley, I think that's one of the reasons why books are so hard to declutter and that's why they're so much later on our Reset Your Home roadmap In our membership, I mean, we've got a massive course about books and, and all of the different things that are involved to declutter books and a lot of the.

Leave it until later to do that. I mean, of course, you know, there are some of the members who are like, well, books are easy for me. I'm going to do that much sooner. But most people find it hard.

[00:21:29] Lesley: They do. So let's pop to a break now and we're going to come back with some practical things that you could do to carry on with your decluttering and organising of your books.

[00:21:40] Ingrid: Welcome back to your books podcast. We hope all of our decluttering questions and the things that we spoke about before the break will help you. But we also wanted to give you some practical tips and advice on where to start and how to do this whole decluttering of these books.

[00:22:00] Lesley: I think before we even start declutter, I think we need to take a little step back and think about where our books are in the house, right? So I think, I think it's fair to say that we have worked out that there's a right location for books and there's a wrong location for books. And for many people they have their books in the wrong location.

And by that I mean kind of out of sight of mind in garages, in Loft. In basements in sort of spare bedrooms, double stacked, which we might talk about again in a minute. So they're in the wrong place, right? The books are in the wrong place, and so it's really important to make sure that if you decide that you're going to keep your books, that you put those books in the right place.

Now the right place is near where you're going to read them in my opinion. Yeah. So that might be scattered around the house. So your cookery books should be in the kitchen near to where you're cooking your, it depends on what you read, you know. But if you're going to read a novel or something like that and you typically read in your living room, then perhaps your books should be there.

It might be that you have some books in your bedroom, cus you love to read in your bedroom. Your children's books need to be. In their playroom or in their bedroom. And so books are typically going to be scattered around the house, but a box in a loft, in a garage is not the right place for your books, cus you're never, ever, ever going to read them.

[00:23:18] Ingrid: No. So that's why the de decluttering is important. Don't pretend to go, I'm finding this too hard. I'm going to take some out. I'm going to put them in a box. I'm going to store them temporarily in my loft somewhere else, and I'm going to get around to it. You are not. As soon as it's out of sight, it's out of mind. And let's talk about double stacking a little bit, Lesley, because I think it's the same principle there.

We see it all the time that people have two rows in front, you know, one row in front of the other, the, the books on the back row. I'm never even taken out because you can't see them anymore, so you forget that they're there. So our main thing is do not double stack books. If you have to double stack, you have too many books, so you're going to have to declutter some. So they're all in one row.

[00:24:13] Lesley: Now it is an interesting one, Ingrid, because we've talked about the wrong place for books, and we've talked about books being in boxes, in lofts and garages, sometimes and what I would prefer is for books to be out of a box and double stacked. And this is where we're looking at. So we're talking about somebody who's got a lot of books here.

And so I think it's really important for us to maybe do a phased approach. So take them out of the box. The ideal would be, okay, we take all the books out the box we declutter what we don't need. We have one single stack on a bookcase. That's the ideal, but it might be that it's a little bit more difficult to get there than perhaps we're making out.

Simple as that for all the reasons that we spoke about before the break. And so it might be that you have to take those books, double stack them on some shelves, and then really start to to, you know, to have a plan to weedle them down over. The weeks and months. And so I can see a place for double stacking if it's something that you've struggled with in the past, if you've got not, some people have not got space for double stacking on shelves cause the shelves are not wide enough.

But many people double stack them, stack them on top, you know, whatever. And it's not something that we like because it in, it impacts on visibility and accessibility. And in the same way that that's super important in a kitchen. It's really important with your books because if you can't see them and you can't get to them, you're not going to read them. And so what's the point?

[00:25:32] Ingrid: Yeah. Yeah. I think, and I think that's absolutely true because if, if books are. In the wrong place. You're not going to consciously go, oh, let me go and find this book it. It needs to be where you're going to be using it, and it needs to be the right amount of books. I think we are, just to clarify listeners, Lesley and I don't think you should have no books to your house. Books definitely have a place. We're not saying, well, declutter everything and completely go to a Kindle or Audible because everybody's got different tastes and does different things in their lives. Some people love having bookshelves full of books in their living room, or they might even say, one of the rooms in my house is going to be my reading room, and that's where all my books are going to be, and they can be beautiful.

But I think the whole idea is that. If you see your books as something very precious, what you don't want to do is let them get lost in the space they're in.

[00:26:32] Lesley: Yeah, we need to give them what they deserve really. In terms of space and the possibility of being read. Would you, would you consider yourself Ingrid for book reading to be a hobby?

[00:26:45] Ingrid: I think for me it's more a bit like relaxation and, and when, when I find a good book, I can really, like suddenly six evenings or 12 evenings in a row read that book and get into it and, and love the whole story and the characters and things like that. So for

[00:27:00] Lesley: But you've always got more than one book on the go, haven't you?

[00:27:03] Ingrid: Yes, but that's because I, I, I don't want to read like a business book.

I read a lot of business books as well, and I kind of read similar, different things at the same time. And sometimes a, a, a topic interests me, but then I'm like, oh, I just want to have a break from that. And then, but if it's a good novel, I can stick with it. I think it's more the business books that I kind of dip in and out of.

[00:27:24] Lesley: Right. Okay. Let's talk. Categorisation then, so what do we think about categorisation of books? Do we think we need to be really specific about categorisation? Is that going to help us in the long run.

[00:27:38] Ingrid: Yes, from, but for me, that works really well because I like seeing things in categories that's the same as in a kitchen. I like to see my Tupperware together and my glasses together. I think the same works works for me in my head with books. So I would have all the, the cookbooks together and the travel books together, and the novels together, and educational or learning books together because it would help me then to find a book I would not want everything everywhere because how then are you going to find a a book when you need it or when you think, oh, I'm sure I've got it. But if it's somewhere on three or four bookshelves, then it's really difficult to retrieve it.

[00:28:19] Lesley: I think if you're somebody that we'll be talking about where you have a high volume of books, perhaps your categories need to be not the obvious ones like Ingrid just spoken about, you know, novels here and traveling, et cetera.

We can all work out what that looks like for ourselves, but I think it's really important for you to think about. Maybe having a section for brand new books that I've not read yet, books that I've read, ones that I definitely want to return to half read books. Books that I want to, I know that I want to pass on.

And so I think it's about thinking about systems within your categorisation as well. I saw this thing, actually, I put it on the Facebook group a couple of months ago where, um, somebody had put like a, a jar on the top of their, they had loads and loads of ex, not excessive books, but a large number of books that they had not read.

And they put, they kind of signed a number to each book and they had like, almost like raffle tickets in a jar and they picked one out and then they were like, that's the book that I'm going to read this week. And a lot of people are like, no, I could never do that. I have this system where I do it in this way and. Like that would never work for me because I, I choose my books depending on how I'm feeling that day and a different kind of book. And so I think you've got to think about your own behaviors with books as well within your categorisation. I think that's really important as well.

[00:29:34] Ingrid: Mm-hmm. So, have you ever created a a, a not read yet shelf of books?

[00:29:42] Lesley: Yes. Yes, definitely. Um, because I think what that does, if you are a big, um, book lover, means that you confront yourselves almost with the amount of things that you've already got that are there for the taking, for the reading. That means that you don't go out and buy new because you're like, I want to use, use. It's almost like doing an inventory in a kitchen, you know, you then know what, what you've got because you've rediscovered them, you've recategorised them, you put them into a different place. Um, we do this all the time with toiletries as well, and we like a used first, um, basket. You know, all of those kinds of things.

Mean that you are confronted with what you've got and then you're like, that's the one, that's the section that I'm going to choose from. And so I think it's things like that. It might be that you, you, you impose restrictions on yourself. It all sounds very kind of rigid, but I think if you have got a prob what.

What we want to gain from this in the same way that we want to gain it with a kitchen or with a bathroom, is what we don't want is these precious books to go to waste or these precious food or toiletries to go to waste. We want to allow you a system, an opportunity to use these up in an appropriate manner, and then make the decision to declutter them.

And so providing this in inventory and categorisation, categorisation for yourself is what will allow you to do that. It creates self-awareness. You know what you got, you know what you are playing with, and then you can take it from there. So I think. Things like that are really important as are things like one in one out policies, you know, these restrictions that you put on yourself.

That's fine, Lesley. I can go out and I can buy myself a new book, but I need to make sure that I'm willing to declutter something, um, that's already on my bookshelf when I come back, or even before I go.

[00:31:27] Ingrid: I know because we can really get tempted, don't we, when we go in the shops, especially if you love shopping, and especially if you're like, oh, I, I, I am a book buying person. Maybe it's better to avoid the bookshop for a little while if you find out that you've got lots and lots of books that you haven't touched yet and that you've been meaning to read for a long time.

So yes, maybe avoidance tactics need to be put into place when you're, when you're, when you're going to Blue Water here, you're closed. In the big shopping center where I live, there's lovely bookshops and it's so tempting to, because they all look at you like, read me, you know?

[00:32:06] Lesley: And, um, we all know where we struggle, don't we? Where we can be kind of, our arm can be twisted to buy something and, and so I think books are that for a lot of people.

[00:32:17] Ingrid: Yeah.

[00:32:18] Lesley: So Ingrid, we've talked a little bit about some of the simple dec decluttering decisions that we can make with books or are some that I know in our, in our world, I know brainers, there are a lot more, that are a lot more difficult and there are loads of reasons why and loads of quite deep emotions involved with books that we talk about certainly in our membership, in our books course, and that's why it's such a lengthy course. There's loads of things we could go on for years and years about books, couldn't we? Ingrid? And it is a real problem for a lot of people. But hopefully we've given you a little bit of food for thought.

We've given you some ideas about the types of things that you can do to understand your own systems and your own behaviors to try and move on from them and to get a book collection that you love that you can utilise and that you can read. Hopeful.

[00:32:59] Ingrid: Yes. So do we want to ask our listeners if they want to come clean and tell us how many unread books they have? Lesley, I would love to notice in the comments, is anybody feeling brave? Does anybody put their hand up and say, yes? I'm a book lover and I've got an a, a a shelf with unread books and Ingrid and Lesley.

I'm going to share with you how many books there are. Tell us, go to declutterhub.com/236 and leave us a comment in the show notes.

[00:33:28] Lesley: How many unwritten books have you got?

[00:33:31] Ingrid: Uh, I think about four.

[00:33:35] Lesley: Right? I don't think I've got any, I've not got many books. One of my clients absolutely despairs of me as if, like, how can you even have a say about books? I'm like, It's not why, it's not why I do, it's why I say no, you're joking. Anyway, so, um, well, hopefully that's given everybody a little bit of food for thought and yeah, we'd, we'd love to see those numbers, wouldn't we?

[00:33:55] Ingrid: Yeah, I'm, I'm intrigued now. I'm intrigued. I would love to learn and know from our listeners, so let us know. Thanks so much for listening.

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Episode 322 – How to avoid Black Friday shopping Don’t Buy Ask Why

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Episode 320 – What is clutter blindness and how to fix it?

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Lisa from Iroquois says:

17 July 2023 at 7:01 PM

I have two types of unread books. Novels and casual reading are in a stack beside the bed. On the stairs I have baskets of research type books that I have gathered up and until I sit down and browse through it to determine if it is a 'keeper' for my research shelves they do not get put into the official collection. In our household we sort our books by subject – crystals, human prehistory, religion, psychology etc. I enjoyed today's podcast. Thank you. We are getting ready to move/downsize and so this topic is near to my heart.

Reply
1. Ingrid says:
  
  24 July 2023 at 10:03 AM
  
  Hi Lisa,
  
  Thank you for sharing! Sounds like you have a plan going, but just be careful with having baskets with book on the stairs. I would not want you to trip over them walking up and down. Books are notoriously tricky to declutter, hence we have a whole course about them in our membership. You can even join us for a month if you'd like to do that course alone. You can find out more on members.declutterhub.com. Good luck moving and downsizing.
  
  Reply
Liz Charpleix says:

9 May 2023 at 12:18 PM

Four unread books! I've got more like four whole shelves spread out over half a dozen bookshelves, plus several piles scattered around the house, waiting for me to finish decluttering the archives of the business I sold in 2016. And very little of that is fiction – I borrow my fiction from the library, on audio book for listening to in the car, and as paper books for holding in my hands at bed time or when waiting in the doctor's surgery.
While listening to this podcast, I'm listing the accounting texts that were useful in my old business on the local uni's secondhand book app (probably won't get any takers, so they'll join the 18 years of tax manuals – that were outdated the year after purchase – in the garden as mulch and strange vegie patch borders).

Reply
1. Ingrid Jansen says:
  
  9 May 2023 at 1:35 PM
  
  Hi Liz, maybe you can get all your unread books together in one bookshelf and take it from there? Good luck!
  
  Reply
Suzanne says:

8 May 2023 at 5:18 AM

Good one. It inspired me to go online to Libby, our city library app, to review my electronic book and audiobook holds. I reduced it down to the how-tos plus 4. I keep forgetting about all the books I’d like to read and which I own.
I felt a little frisson when Lesley asked about a count and confess of Unread books at home. Hmm.
Is it better to possess more unread books or more books which were read but will never be read again?

Reply
1. Ingrid Jansen says:
  
  8 May 2023 at 7:56 PM
  
  mmm Suzanne, that feels like the one million dollar question to me. For me only the really special books get the stay and fill up my space.
  
  Reply
Laura says:

7 May 2023 at 11:04 AM

RE your question right at the end – oh dear, most of my books I haven’t read! I can usually declutter a book once I’ve read it. So how many unread books do I own? Umm, without counting, must be at least 50-60!!

Reply
1. Ingrid Jansen says:
  
  8 May 2023 at 7:55 PM
  
  Thank you for sharing Laura! Have a look if you're really going to read those unread books or not. Maybe you can declutter some of those? Also try to find out why you keep buying them, but are not reading them. Is it the buying you love, or is it that you need to make time for reading?
  
  Reply
  1. Laura says:
    
    9 May 2023 at 7:50 AM
    
    Thanks Ingrid! I stopped buying them Tera ago but didn’t get rid of any! Definitely food for thought.

Episode 240 – How to declutter books

Episode 322 – How to avoid Black Friday shopping Don’t Buy Ask Why

Episode 321 – The secrets of organisation when you have ADHD with Ian Anderson Gray

Episode 320 – What is clutter blindness and how to fix it?

Episode 319 – Katie Mortram from Good Housekeeping chats all things clutter

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