Cleaning Up

My library / office has been crowded with books for years. Added to those are the couple of bookcases-full in Laurie's office. Sorting and culling has been on my to-do list for quite awhile now, but I knew it would not be an easy task.

With the holidays providing a pair of four-day weekends and Laurie on a trip to Thailand with Sammi, I finally had the opportunity to tackle the job the way I wanted and needed to.

I pulled books from every shelf, every cabinet, every closet and every nook and cranny that I had them stored in. There were stacks everywhere as I matched up books by series, by author, by whatever esoteric connections I gave them. Then I went through them to decide what I wanted to keep and what I was willing to part with.

As it turned out, I had dozens (and dozens) of books that I knew I would never read again and, therefore, had no good reason to keep. So I loaded a batch into bags and brought them to the library, where they have a spinner rack for giveaways. I managed to fill the rack with what I brought.

Two days later, I was back at the library with another batch of bags. Almost everything I had brought the first time was gone. Again, I loaded the rack.. Three days of work between the two holiday weekends slowed down my sorting a bit, but I welcomed in the New Year by loading up another dozen bags.

I was not really surprised, when I went to the library last Saturday, to discover that virtually everything I'd already brought was gone. This time I had more books than would fit into the rack, so I left a large pile on the window sill next to it. Even as I was loading the books, a woman was pulling some from the rack and asked if I had any more by specific authors. She walked out with a stack of books.

As the second long weekend wound down, I had all the remaining books sorted into logical order and got them to fit onto shelves. No more stacks in front of the bookcases, no more piles on top of cabinets, no more "I need to find a place for this."

And there's even a bit of room for some new ones.