The major project I’m taking on during this time that I have off is to finally declutter everything that I’ve put off decluttering for the last – oh – lots of years. Fortunately, there hasn’t been a build-up of crap in the last 12 years or so since I kind of generally just stopped buying things I wasn’t going to use right away. In my decluttering frenzy method, I did come across a box of old tax records from almost 15 years ago. I’m really quite impressed with the state of my accounting records at the time. I spent a lot of time recording minutiae.
Unfortunately, not a lot of time was spent stepping back and analyzing it to look at the big picture – that I was spending more than I made.
A lot of that spending was on books – in many months it was upwards of $200 per month, every month. And I see there were quite a lot of library fines in that time period too – that’s what happens when you reach the upper limit of 99 books able to be withdrawn in a 3 week time period and can’t keep track of them all. (Yeah, I read them all – I read kind of fast.)
Minimalist son?
My oldest son has inherited my book addiction. Even during my brokest periods, if he wanted a book – I bought it. The difference between him and me (apart from the last year or so) is that he keeps all of his old books and I give mine away. He has somewhere around 1000 books in his collection and I have about 300 “keepers”. There’s about 80 books in my “to be read” dedicated bookshelf alone. A box off that shelf goes go with me when we travel and I give them away along the journey.
I keep my addiction in check by having a buying limit of one book a month – always non-fiction. I no longer buy fiction but put in a request to my library to stock any fiction titles I’m interested in that they don’t already have. My “rule” is to check every book out of the library first – if it’s something I think I’ll want to refer to again, I’ll buy it.
The oldest kid has decided that he wants to become a minimalist. He’s been reading Thoreau and Epictetus. I think he already is a minimalist by definition – he’s a 23 year old bachelor that lives in his mother’s basement. So I think he’s going to spend some bucks converting most of the books he owns into digital versions which seems wonky to me. Does it make sense that you should have to spend money replacing something you already own in a different format in order to embrace minimalism? You still have the “stuff”, it’s just in a portable format. Maybe he’s just dreading the thought of moving out and packing up all those books.
But just look at Christopher Hitchen’s study and that wonderful stack of books. It’s a thing of beauty.
Borders close-out
I broke my “one book buying rule” on our little journey down south this summer when I came across the close-out of a Borders store in Montana. I picked up a couple of writing books and this recipe book:
The Take-Out Menu Cookbook – this is an excellent book for anyone who’s into cookbook p0rn like I am. You can save a ton of time on some of your favourites by making up a batch of sauce for a dish like Pad Thai and freezing it in individual containers. Total cost to make the sauce is under a buck compared to a jar from the store that runs around $4.
I whittled down my recipe book collection by putting all my recipe books outside of my kitchen on a bookshelf for a year. If I used them, they remained in my kitchen and whatever was left after a year got packed off to my local freebie book swap center. I eliminated over 60 cookbooks in the great cookbook purge of 2010. This is sort of like First Gen American’s pantry method – which I’m going to start applying. Soon.
Freebies!
Hey, Amazon has a sale on for some free kindle books (courtesy of dailycheapreads.com).
PS – I highly recommend “Getting the Words Right.” Too bad I already bought it at Borders this summer. But hey! Now I have an electronic copy too!
I feel like your 23-year old son is so much smarter than I was at his age. 23, reading Thoreau and finding minimalism? I didn’t even know what it was called until I was at least 24 or 25, and I haven’t even picked up a book of Thoreau’s until I was 26! AT LEAST.
Still, it’s nice he has these ideas in his head and these convictions. Very impressive.. but not at all surprising with you as his brilliant mom
I struggle all the time with book & ebook debates, but in the end, I absolutely cannot travel with boxes of books.
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Fab, I don’t think he knows the current expression of this is called minimalism. He thinks he’s just following the example of Greek philosophers.
I told him that Thoreau’s mom still did his laundry and he went into town on a weekly basis, but I guess I was wrecking the romance of it all.
I have to say I LOVE ebooks for fiction since it slows me down in reading, but absolutely hate the format for non-fiction. But that’s what the library is for.
Books are indeed an addiction. I’ve recently been trying to embrace the library. I was always one to buy my own books, but they’re not cheap and I knew I couldn’t afford to maintain my ‘habit’. So basically, I just wasn’t reading and my life really had a lost a dimension because of it. I just got so sick of the computer and television. One of the biggest hurtles was getting over the fact that I will have to wait for popular books to become available by placing holds and who knows when it will be ready? There are lots of good older books that I’m getting to know now while I wait for some of my holds to be available.
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Oh, I know how you feel Kim. I feel lost sometimes without being able to read what I want to read when I want to read it. It’s almost a physical craving.
Fortunately (I guess), I have SO many books I want to read, that I have them coming in from inter-library loan on a regular basis. It’s sort of like Christmas when I go pick them up every week!
The other thing that really does bother me is that I like to support authors that I love. I hate to think that we’ll lose some great storytellers because they just can’t make a living at what they do due to people not reading – or buying – books as much.
We are PRO books! And owning books! A room without books is like a body without a soul.
We’re also pro- getting rid of useless cookbooks (honestly, do some authors even *try* their recipes?). But keep the good ones.
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I know! I’ve tried a lot of recipes (and I’m a pretty good cook), where I just wonder what they were thinking? To be honest, that’s why I like the review system on allrecipes.com too. If 1000 people give a recipe 5 stars, I know it’s pretty good. I stay away from the cookbooks that are obviously authors just churning things out (ie. they cannot be too prolific.)
Books are an addiction for me too. My ideal room would be half library/half pantry – what does that say about me I wonder?!
My minimalist side ignores books and tinned food goods!
Anyway good luck with your decluttering Jacq – let us know if you find any treasures
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I think it says that you’re interesting and well-fed at a good price.
Oh no treasures here Laura I’m sad to say. I did find some great books I’d thought I’d lost somehow though.
The one thing I’m unwilling to part with is all my knitting materials. We’ll see how much of it I can use up this winter. There’s WAY too much though, I know that. I don’t know, maybe I’ll put a deadline on it – use it or lose it. That might be 5 years.
Well, you’re talking to the person who has 9 bookcases in her home. Yes, we have too many books as well but I think my husband is more guilty of them than I am…but it’s a vice for both of us.
No, it’s not minimalist to want electronic copies of all the books. I would build up the ebooks over time myself, although I did digitize all my cd’s first before I purged them, but I didn’t have to rebuy them to do so.
Thanks for linking to my pantry post. It really is super duper easy to implement and I was able to stick to sharpying dates on my canned goods since 2008.
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Sandy, I used to have way more books myself. I’ve been giving away around 20 or so a month for the last maybe 2 years. Not all ones that I bought though, since I pick up some from our book swap too. The buying has stayed constant.
All my favorite people love books as much as I do.
I don’t have a ton of canned stuff really. Well, maybe a dozen cans of spaghetti sauce and about 200 cans of cat food… but who’s counting? I do think I have other things though – like cereal (which we don’t eat) that I should be more cognizant of. And my spices – I know they aren’t as fresh as they should be, but I don’t know the answer to that other than chucking them once a year or so.
Yes, but at least it’s an addiction that won’t make you sell your care to buy more. I’ve gotten to the point that I strategically stack books horizontally in the bookcases in order to use every cubic inch of storage. Then again, I’m one of those book nerds that enjoys re-arranging books by author and genre. Frustrated librarian, maybe?
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Andrew is that really nerdy? Because I do it too! I’ve often thought it would be fun to work in a library, pushing books on people just like a drug dealer… getting them addicted…
Great suggestions. When I want a book, I want it now. That’s my downfall. The only restriction I’ve successfully made is insisting that I download a Kindle sample and READ it before purchasing a book. I get frustrated when the library doesn’t own the book I want or has a huge waiting list. I do think giving myself a book-a-month restriction would help me! And maybe I’ll start putting myself on the waiting list at the library and break my gotta-have-it-now habit.
Mel, I think I’ve come to realize that there are SOOOO many books that I thought I had to have NOW – that ended up on my “to be read” pile… 6 months later…
Or I ended up giving them away a year later. That’s painful too. I sort of set up a trigger in my head that when I see something on Amazon I want, I immediately go to my library site and reserve it. Books have been the hardest of all habits for me to break. I guess because I don’t fundamentally see it as a BAD thing to want to learn more.
Don’t fight the addiction!
If you give this up, you might end up turning to something like crack cocaine to replace it. And that would be a bad thing.
One thing I do do is stick books I want on my Amazon wishlist. Then after Christmas if people haven’t bought me what I really wanted, I go through and buy the ones I really wanted. That helps because it serves as a reminder throughout the year when I go to the library etc. and I can take things off before they’re bought if they don’t pan out. If I don’t have time, then they just stay on the wishlist another year.
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My inter-library is, admittedly – awesome. And my memory is, admittedly – bad. I figure if I don’t remember it for more than one time, it’s a good thing. And I’ll read something else that’s vaguely related – and possibly even better. So many books, so little time…
Books is the one thing I too have always spent money on. My oldest son was a reading maniac, and we were always at the library or Barnes and Noble. (But not Toys R Us.)
I have a problem with cookbooks too. I don’t know why I find them so fascinating. I have some from my grandma and I love the ingredients and measurements.
Congrats on raising a minimalist!
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I just LOVE cookbooks! The old ingredients and measurements are so fascinating because you really don’t know what the hell they’re talking about (I think). Plus I learned to cook from my grandmother and back then, they didn’t seem to measure things. I don’t recall her ever actually using a recipe OR a measuring cup. And everything was cooked with uber-lard so it tasted WONDERFUL.
Meh, I don’t think it’s much of a challenge to be a minimalist when you’re 23 and don’t have kids. I was that way when I was 23 and had him. It took one pickup truck to move us back then. The “problem” that I’ve had in the last few years has been from not having the time to get rid of things. I’m totally unsentimental (this isn’t a great thing really) – but just due to time constraints, have had a problem getting rid of things in an environmentally sustainable way. Make no mistake, to get rid of things on goodwill, freecycle, etc. takes a TON of time. Makes you just not want to buy anything that you won’t be keeping for 20-odd years.
I like to watch Hoarders while I declutter.