Decluttering and getting rid of stuff is great, but it can be easy for stuff to accumulate again if you’re not diligent about it. In our house, I find this to be especially true of books.
I love, love, love books. I love to read them. I love to hold them. I think they make fabulous decor. They bring me great joy. Aside from my boys’ many projects, books are the things that tend to accumulate the most easily around our house.
That said, we live in a small house. Our house has minimal space for most things. And while we have, without exaggeration, thousands of books at our house, we don’t really have room for adding to their number.
So I’m slowly working on paring our books down to books that we truly love. We have many books that we adore. This is especially true of children’s books that my boys and I read regularly. And we periodically get introduced to new books that we love (some of our current favorites were gifts my boys received over the holidays).
But we also have books that are unlikely to get re-read (mostly adult books) or children’s books that get pushed to the back of the shelf because they don’t have that special spark that makes a truly special book. Those books where the flow isn’t quite right, or the story simply doesn’t appeal to us. Those are my current targets. When we come across a new book that we love and want to add to our shelves, I find a book that has languished in a corner or that no one is likely to read again in order to pass it on to someone else.
Not only does this rule help to keep our book collection under control, it also makes it increasingly easy for my boys to choose a book that we all love to read.
This same principal works for whatever tends to accumulate in your home. Whether it’s books, clothing, decor items, toys, or anything else, the idea of “One In, One Out” can help you to keep the sheer number of items in your house under control. And this will help to keep the gains you’ve made by decluttering apparent throughout your home.
Do you follow the “One In, One Out” Rule with any type of purchases/acquisitions in your home? What tends to accumulate most for you? Do you have another way to keep those items under control?
I follow that rule with most books, toys, and clothes. I am trying to involve my kids more in the process as I want to teach them the values of generosity and non attachment. I am a hoarder when it comes to wooden toys, folk art and out of print books (art, Buddhism, herbalism, classic kid’s). It is because I know these things will soon be gone for good and quite rare. I feel they have value and special beauty. I want my grand kids to have them. Especially if they inherit a world devoid of beauty. I think what keeps it under control is the lack of space in our house and the memory of living in an apartment for nine weeks in Central Asia. I had so much time because I had so few things to deal with in that place. I would happily exchange my well stocked kitchen for two pans, 4 tea cups and 4 plates. I love your giant library and I hope it does not decrease too much in size like the one downtown did. Books are the most valuable thing in human society. Once printed they can’t be censored and can travel anywhere.
I have no plans to downsize our library, but I am planning to continue to curate it as we encounter other books we want to keep. 🙂
I have found over years of decluttering that my long-held defence of books is weakening. I truly love books and will always buy some,and keep many but those I know will be a single read now come as ebooks. And my lovingly collected books are subject to more and more scrutiny, so I’m surprising myself that I am willing to let a lot more go than I ever thought possible 😮
Over the years my idea of which books are important have changed too, but [aside from a flood that swept through our house and wiped out a huge number] they haven’t seemed to decrease much over the years. Maybe it’ll come. 🙂