Day three and I’m halfway through the process of tidying my books. I’ve gone through about half my books, and six boxes have left the house. I’m so glad they’re gone — not because they were taking up space, but because they were sucking out psychic energy and dragging me down. Now they will enjoy a new life in somebody else’s hands. And I will enjoy new books.

This tidying process is from the book the life-changing magic of tidying up by marie kondo. I have written more about it here and here. I followed the process as closely as I could, but because I’m a writer, and books are my business, it was not entirely applicable. It’s right for me to keep many books that don’t “spark joy.” So, I substituted some of kondo’s rules for my own.

What I did:

Day One: I gathered every single book I owned from every corner of the house. We have fourteen bookshelves altogether–three in my office, two in the kids’ rooms, and nine in other parts of the house. I got all the books that were outside my office and put them on the floor of my office. Then I got two boxes of books from the storage room and put them there too. It was mighty crowded by then!

Day Two: I got myself into a good psychic space and started going through my books, one by one, sorting them into categories and handling them to see if they sparked joy. Quite a few of them did the opposite! So I put them in boxes to go. I erred on the side of keeping books I wasn’t sure of, but even so, I filled six boxes. As I filled them, I put them outside my room. I took frequent breaks, but even so, after about four hours I was fried! I took a good long break, ate a bunch of food, and then started up again in the late afternoon. Another hour or two and I was done.

Only trouble: the rest of the books, from all over the house, were on the floor of my room! I spent an hour trying to shelve books, but they won’t all fit on my own shelves, and I don’t know yet which ones I want to keep outside my office. To make matters worse, those other nine bookshelves are crowded with other people’s books.

Day Three: I stopped worrying about where to put my books and focused on getting those six boxes out the door. It was harder than I thought. If I had it to do over again, I would have just put them in the trunk of the car and driven them straight to a thrift store. Instead, I took them to a local to sell. They took a lot fewer books than I had expected, leaving me with five boxes I still had to take to the thrift store.

But now they’re gone, and I feel great!

I’m going to wait a week or so before I finish up the rest of my books. It’s been emotionally difficult and I’m fried! But the rest won’t be anywhere near as hard.

What I learned:

• Books hold emotions and memories and have a physicality of their own.
• It matters where I put my books. There are some spots on the bookshelf I look at every day. Those are not the places to put the books I keep meaning to read.
• Some books are the wrong size for their text. For instance, I had two copies of Vonda McIntyre’s The Moon and the Sun, one hardback and one paperback. Before I started the process, I figured I would donate the hardback and keep the paperback. I did the opposite.
• I don’t much like dust jackets. If a book has a dust jacket that’s torn or fading, the book is doomed to leave my house.
• I’m under no obligation to read any book I own.
• If somebody I know and like has written a book and I have purchased it, I am under no obligation to read it, and I am also under no obligation to give it away. I can keep it on my shelf and feel pleased for my friend.
• My collection of books has some gaps I didn’t see until I got rid of what I didn’t want. I owned some books by authors whose books I read and enjoyed twenty years ago. But I didn’t own those exact books. I’m sure they’re out there somewhere.

Enjoy yourselves, dear books, and farewell.

from Pinterest/wimmink

Yesterday I spent several hours finding every single book that I own (except all the ones my family uses and all the children’s books) and putting them on the floor of my room. Now I’m sorting through them, and it’s excruciating. Not because I don’t know which too keep and which to give away, but because I’m actually sorting through twenty-five years of my past, and not all the memories are happy ones. I have little resentments and disappointments — not a big deal all in all, but all piled on my floor . . . ugh.

I’m doing this as part of the process in the book the life-changing magic of tidying up, which I posted about yesterday. This is the second stage of tidying. The first was clothes. I gathered every last item of clothing I owned and decided whether or not they “sparked joy.” Taking the time to consider each item one by one was indeed “life-changing magic,” because it tuned me in to my emotional response to all the times. Turns out, some of them just made me feel bad about myself. They’re gone now, and I wish them well in their new life!

The same is happening with books, but it’s much stronger and harder. Once I’m done, though, I’m going to look at my bookshelves and feel good about every single thing I see!

There I was at the bookstore, haggling with my children over how many books they were allowed to buy, knowing that most likely my daughter’s books would be read before the weekend was out and they would just hang out on our bookshelf as clutter . . . and then I saw this lovely little title.

the life-changing magic of tidying up, by marie kondo.

It feels good in the hand, with just the right heft. The front cover is clear and lovely, and the back cover has poetry and a pretty woman. A sneak peek inside showed me prose that was clean, smooth, and encouraging.

I bought it.

There’s a paradigm shift here. You don’t do it a little at a time, and you don’t focus on what to get rid of, and you don’t use reason to decide what to toss.

Instead, you tackle items one category at a time, in marathon sessions. You decide what you want to keep, rather than what you want to get rid of, and you make that decision by feel. Her rule of thumb is to touch each item to see if it sparks joy.

Most importantly, though, you change your relationship to objects. You treat them like living things, thanking them for what they have done for you. When you discard them, you are releasing their energy.

I’ve seen a lot of people talk about her book as “new agey” or “woo woo.” Actually, though, it’s influenced by the ancient Japanese practice of Shinto, which includes the concept that objects have souls, or energy. This is a very practical way to think, because it helps us treat them respectfully.

If you asked me if I thought objects had souls or feelings, I would have said no. But the reason I kept all that stuff in the first place was that I felt guilty for throwing it out. And why did I feel guilty? Who would it hurt for me to discard something that only I used? For good or ill, I have a relationship with my stuff. We all do. We anthropomorphize our objects.

Once I realized that, I was ready to go.

Two weeks later, and my relationship with my possessions is different. My closet and dresser are filled with only the clothes and shoes I want and no more. (About fifteen bags of clothes and shoes went to Value Village.) At the same time, I found all my nice dresses! My pantry doesn’t scare me any more. I can open two of my kitchen drawers without yanking. This is a good start.

The next step, according to Kondo’s recommendation, would be to go through the books. But I would really want to set aside a whole day for that, and I’m not ready. So I’m working on papers. Forty pounds recycled today, along with some emotional baggage they’ve been carrying. But within those forty pounds, I found some buried treasures. I revived good memories of courses I taught at the community college, and I found an article that is of immediate use to me.

I feel different in my own skin, too. I feel more free.

So would I recommend this book? It depends on what you want. I was the poster child for needing this book. When I got toward the end and read this passage I had to smile.

“Although I have spent this entire book talking about tidying, tidying is not actually necessary. You won’t die if your house isn’t tidy, and there are many people in the world who really don’t care if they can’t put their house in order. Such people, however, would never pick up this book. You, on the other hand, have been led by fate to read it, and that means you probably have a strong desire to change your current situation. . . ”

Yes, that’s me. Clutter has been in my top three list of stressors ever since my son was in preschool, and I was absolutely ready to let it go. This was just the right book, at just the right time.

At the same time, I’m pretty sure I’ve doomed myself to six months of intensive tidying! If that’s not what you want, don’t read the book.