Successes!

 Books. 

I love books. I like the feel of them around. I like them neatly upright on a shelf. I like them stacked in piles on side tables. I like them leaned up against the fabric covered tea box in my office; waiting for me to pick them up and continue where I left off. 

I often have a few books going at any time. I sometimes will abandon a book for months, only to pick it up and complete it in an afternoon. Books are just such an essential part of my life. I hate to part with them. I like looking up to see the title on a spine, reminding me of the experience of reading it. 

So, the conventional wisdom in declutter is to start with "easy" things like books. It isn't the easiest category for me. I did declutter the books though. I did it by providing myself a framework for decision making. If I had read it and it wasn't a "reference" status book (I have kept all my college literature anthologies because you just never know when history will get wiped and we have to begin again), or it was a book I'd grabbed from somewhere but no longer seemed interested in reading (and if I did, I could find it at the library), or it was a reference/non-fiction that was either dated or easy to locate in a public library, internet, etc. I ended up parting ways with probably 60-70 books. That was just a quick sweep of the shelves. 

I did get rid of all but one of the ancient Readers from the 1800s. I was holding onto them because they had sat on my mother's desk when I grew up. I now have my mother's desk. When I got this from my brother, I felt a pull to recreate the arrangement of things she kept on top of it and one item she kept in it. The postage meter/scale (antique even then) is long gone and too expensive on ebay to replace, I did have the books and a painted rock she kept on it. But in the end, I tend to keep the top clear because I do watercolor painting and drawing on the desk and had to clear the trinkets before I could begin. 

Inside the desk, I have a package of Holly Hobbie wrapping paper from the 1970's. The exact same paper she had in there. I know because as a child, I loved Holly Hobbie's drawings of sunbonneted little girls and would often open the drawer to look at the paper. She would use it for small gifts but she either liked it or forgot she had it because it remained in the drawer for as long as I could recall. I was able to find an unopened package on ebay. I have used a little of it to wrap some small gifts for my own daughters but I will retain a square so I can peek at it when I open the drawer. 

Anyway, I managed to let go of the dusty old tomes. I kept one that contains the signature of my great grandmother, Grace Patterson. It is the only thing I have of hers so I will keep that. I never met her, she was long since passed when I came along but my grandmother, Edith, was (and will always remain) one of the best people I've ever known so I assume her mother was also quite wonderful. 

I am hoping someone will find those other three old books and be excited by what they found. I often shared them with my students, but I noticed this last time, they were less fascinated by them than in the past. "They smell!" "They are dirty!" Yep. They are out there in the world now, looking for a new home. 

There are more books that need to be taken care of in the basement. I think those will be easier. I couldn't tell you which books are down there so probably easy to just see books and not even sort them. Just let them go. Someone will be happy somewhere.