Advice for clearing literary clutter

February 10, 2006 11:27 AM

Suggest practical and creative systems for reducing the number of books I own (rather long exposition inside).

Hopefully this is part 1 of an ongoing decluttering and stuff-organizing project. I am really feeling more motivated to get rid of more stuff nowadays. I've read a lot of the decluttering threads and my issue is very specific and practical, and hopefully does not require therapy.

The vast majority of my possessions by weight and volume consists of books. I would like to develop a system for getting rid of them that will have a very practical, behavioral, methodical approach to the emotions that compel me to keep them.

One category of books is the ones I haven't read yet. This is pretty large. One thought that I had for dealing with them in a mostly scientific way was to arrange them in piles according to a 1-5 assessment of how likely I would be to read them (forcing myself to answer honestly for each one), and keep only the 5's. If there's still too many 5's left, I might break it down further by asking myself what my reasoning is for why I might want to read it (e.g., would I learn something valuable, keep up with a favorite author, be entertained, etc.). For partially read books, the question would be similar, "how likely am I to finish this?" So, I pretty much have a system for this category, and mainly am interested in hearing about similar strategies that have worked for you, or refinements or gotchas to this system. For instance, how does one estimate likeliness to read? What sort of questions does one ask oneself about motivation to read a yet unread book?

Books that I have read break down into several categories. The first is books that I have kept just because I enjoyed them when I read them, will probably never read them again, but they gave me pleasure so I keep the book around to honor that. Again, here, I think reason and logic can prevail if I just put them in a pile and say "I honor how much I enjoyed you when I read you" and then let them go. But that will probably be more painful than it sounds. For this category, advice, strategies, tales of similar efforts, and gotchas are welcome.

Books that I have read and may read again are a much smaller category, and once I have determined which ones those are, I can probably use a similar system as with the unread books to weed them out.

Then there is the large, amorphous category of books I hold on to for some sentimental reason - I read them in a great college class, I know the author, etc. I don't want to be too brutal here and rule them out completely merely because they are sentimental tokens - I want some kind of clarity on what questions to ask myself to determine which ones have a meaningful enough sentiment to hold onto and which ones are just emotional baggage. This is probably the toughest category, and the one where I'd probably benefit the most from hearing about "hacks" that have worked successfully for other people who operate in a similar fashion.

posted by matildaben to writing & language (28 comments total)

For me, I think it's easier to work exactly in the opposite direction. Once I've owned a book for a long-ish time, it's pretty easy to track how often I re-read it. If I never do, then it can go. New books eventually just work their way into this system. (Having moved across the Atlantic and back, and then across the US, also make me wary of owning too many heavy possessions. Things need to be useful and valuable on an ongoing basis to hang around.)

I love the idea of "I honor how much I enjoyed you when I read you." The trick is to be generous with that -- think how much *other* people will enjoy the book when they find it in a cafe, in the used book store, on ebay, whatever. Share the love!
posted by occhiblu at 11:35 AM on February 10, 2006

For the sentimental value books, think of them this way: if they gave you joy, mightn't they give someone else joy? Can you donate them to a local library and share the love?

I am a librarian by profession, but actually own very few books. I consider the library system to be an extention of my own library and borrow almost everything I read. Conversely, if I do buy a book and do not need it for ready reference, I donate it when I am done reading it, knowing I can always check it out if i want to read it again.
posted by Biblio at 11:48 AM on February 10, 2006

As someone who just went from close to a thousand books down to under 75, this is indeed a difficult task.
A few hints:
- join Book Crossing. This ties back to honoring the book, but also getting a secret glee in the hopes that your book will find it's way into anothers hands who might love it as much as you did. You can even track it, thereby indulging your inner geek.
- donate to your local library. Again, you're giving the book to those who might have never had a chance to read it. Besides, for the price (free) of a library card, you can have visitation rights to your darlings whenver you desire. Besides, it's tax deductable, thereby indulging your inner Marley and/or Scrooge.
- sell them used on amazon.com. I've made a pretty little penny doing this. Amazon of course, gets their due, but they do reimburse you a flat fee for shipping and handling. Merely type in the ISBN, find your book, look to the right hand side and click on "Sell Yours Here". This puts money directly into your hands, thereby indulging your inner greedy bastard.

Books are the bestest, I hope these small suggestions help.
posted by willmize at 12:03 PM on February 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

Make a point to congratulate yourself for your successes.
posted by raedyn at 12:12 PM on February 10, 2006

People hang on to books the way some people hang on to...name it. It becomes a security blankie...I have given away shelves and shelves of books in various household moves. My system is easy: hold on to reference books. All others if you want to read over can be bought used or found at a library. In mnost instances few people will reread a book, preferring to read the latest books instead.

Where and how you give them away is for you to decide.
posted by Postroad at 12:16 PM on February 10, 2006

I recently tried to do a book-purge, and by most standards failed miserably, but I did hit on one solid rule: If it's a "classic" or similar work of worthy literature, and it's guaranteed never to go out of print, and it's just a crummy paperback... get rid of it. It can always be replaced.
posted by Faint of Butt at 12:23 PM on February 10, 2006

I managed to lighten my book load by creating a Book Exchange at my work. I work in a largish office (about 200 people). It was pretty easy to find an unused book shelf, and get permission to put in a common area of the office. Over the course of a couple of days, I brought in the books that I had read, but weren't overly attached to, as well as the things I just would never get around to (about 100 books to start). Then I sent out an e-mail to the office inviting them to "take a book, leave a book". It's been very popular. Now I have a continual source of new reading material, and a very convenient way to dispose of things I've finished or don't want any more.
posted by kimdog at 12:28 PM on February 10, 2006

I'm big on de-cluttering, and I've culled my book collection several times. My first bit of advice: if you're truly in doubt as to whether or not you should keep a book, keep it. I've regretted the gaps my own ruthlessness has created.

When I look at my "unread" shelves, I get a certain hunger when I look at those books; a desire to read them that is visceral. If you have this reaction as well, it can guide you as to which unread books are keepers.

I echo those who say think about how much someone else will enjoy those books you've already read, but will not read again. As long as you keep those books, they are essentially dead. Let them live again!

Books that you will read again bear no weeding. If it were me, I would keep every one.

Finally, sentimental books may have to go into a "hold" pile until you've gone through some more of your decluttering. When you've gone through your knick-knacks and keepsakes, and disposed of those that are only taking up space, you may find it easier to go back to your sentimental book pile with a clearer head.

Each object you own requires something of you: space, care, worry, what-have-you. It sounds like you're at the point where you are ready to decide what objects deserve your attention. This may sound like a strange recommendation, but the book Your Money or Your Life has a good section on deciding one's personal priorities, and it was a tremendous help to me as I began de-cluttering many years ago.
posted by frykitty at 12:29 PM on February 10, 2006 [2 favorites]

Before I get rid of a book, I open it up to a random page and start reading. If I'm engrossed, I keep. If I'm bored, I give away. I've been surprised by which books kept out of sentimentality get rediscovered and which get given away by this system.
posted by desuetude at 12:32 PM on February 10, 2006

I sympathize, and I'll offer some advice and comments, although they may be contradictory (which I'm alright with if you are).

I think that the biggest hack I've heard of for this kind of thing is to set a limit on the number of books you can own, and then abide by it. This is probably something that you do before you start the weeding process, because it imposes an outside limit that you have to weed down to. Alternatively, you weed until you get to what you really want to keep, count that number, and then maintain it. The person who I most admire who does this is Michael Dirda who reviews for the Washington Post. He's the best reviewer for the Post by far, and, I think, one of our best reviewers period. His wife only lets him keep 1000 books, and he's written a couple of times about getting rid of one book to add a new one to the library. Given the depth and breadth of his interests it seems just insane that he could keep to it, but apparently he does.

There's another general consideration that I think you should think about before setting out: what kind of library do you want to have? This is a question that you obviously need to answer in terms of size, but also, I think, in terms of philosophy. I'm fine with a much larger number of unread than read books, because I want a library that is full of possiblities. I want a library that builds in categories (maybe only my own) so that I can be pretty confident that I've got the major books in a given category. (An example would be middle-to-Eastern European ficiton, which is overrepresented in the unread section of my library because I'm really interested in it. I'm not going to get rid of any of those books for a long time, and I'll continue to buy more, because I want to be able to pick up the authors that I've read about elsewhere and know that I have their books when I want to read them.) And my example leads to another consideration, how likely am I to be able to find the book when I want to read it later? Even in today's world, filled with long tails, many books go out of print and are then exorbitantly expensive to get a hold of, and libraries don't always stock them. On the other hand, I've a friend in Chicago who loves books as much as I do, but who clearly views her library as a polished and lapidary arrangement of special significance. She has very few books, but she treasures them as they perhaps deserve.

My practical advice is perhaps shorter:

1) Books of reportage more than five years old are already being rewritten. Obviously this is not always true, but it largely is. There will be a new bio of Jefferson, a new book about rainforests, a new travelogue to the ends of the earth, etc. These books are also widely available at libraries.

2) Genre fiction is a tough call, but usually is not much worth keeping unless it's a book you read every year. Again, genre fiction gets rewritten, and while there are, of course, classics, weeding out all the mysteries or scifi you read is a good way to whittle down your library.

3) Classics (like say Hawthorne or Faulkner or Woolf) really depend on the kind of library you want. You'll never have a problem finding a copy again, but it can be awfully nice to look up at The Voyage Out and Between the Acts and know that you've got Woolf there from first to last.

4) Books that you loved that you will not reread are (barring other considerations listed in philosophy above) the perfect books to give to friends. Share the love.

5) Probably the biggest single thing you can do is be honest with yourself about phases that you've gone through, and where you are now. I'm just never going to go back and re-read all the postmodern theory that I loved so well in college. Certainly all the secondary texts should be gone. And then, the primary texts probably have to get whittled down as well. There are classics in some subjects that I'll keep, but being honest about the passing of an intellectual phase can get a lot of books out of the house.

6) Sentiment is hard, but it's easier if you combine your scoring system with a put it away now-give it away later system. If you are unlikely to go back to it, and the sentiment score is low, put it in a sealed box and put the box away. In 6 months take the box to the bookstore to sell, without opening it up.

I do think that figuring out what kind of library you want to have is probably the most critical decision to make that will allow you to get rid of the greatest number of books with the least guilt. (Provided you don't figure out that you want the Library of Congress. Then you're in trouble.)
posted by OmieWise at 12:32 PM on February 10, 2006 [2 favorites]

Faint of Butt writes "If it's a 'classic' or similar work of worthy literature, and it's guaranteed never to go out of print, and it's just a crummy paperback... get rid of it. It can always be replaced."

Good rule, especially for crummy paperbacks.
posted by OmieWise at 12:33 PM on February 10, 2006

Keep it if you know you want to reread it, or if it's something you find yourself recommending often to others.

If you're not crazy about the book but you feel like you have to keep it because your mom gave it to you or something, get rid of it. Trust me!
posted by elisabeth r at 12:38 PM on February 10, 2006

I regularly get rid of most of my books. I have a few that I just couldn't stand to be without, and then a few others that I need as reference material, but the rest go by by.

Imagine you had to flee your city and could only take the books you really need and love. Which would come with you?
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:56 PM on February 10, 2006

When I was renting and moving around a lot I had a few categories that I stuck to fairly ruthlessly:

-"reference" books

- a small collection of books I had read more than once, had a special relationship with, and was likely to read again or want to lend/give to someone else.

-books I hadn't read yet but intended to read in the next twelve months.

If I book didn't fit in one of the three categories, I gave it away or took it to a used book store. Books that sat in the third category for more than a year went to the used book store. I'd go through my books about every six months to weed out.
posted by ambrosia at 1:01 PM on February 10, 2006

I found that once I started keeping track of the books I read, it became easier to let the books themselves go because I had a record of them and what i felt was important about them. OmieWise's point about your ideal library is a good one. I think many people with library backgrounds have an ideal that is sort of library-like, lots of shelves, comfy chairs, good lighting and TIME TO READ. What we're probably missing most of all is the latter.

I got my books-to-read lust in check by doing some simple math, figuring out that at my age and my reading rate there was an upward limit to what I could read in my expected lifetime, and tried to sort out "ok, if I can only read 1000 more books (or whatever" are you going to be one of them?" I read half from my to-read pile and half from the actual public library currently, so this dropped that number even lower. It's a bracing thing to do.

One thing to do with your to-read books is give them to friends on a sort of rent-to-own basis. You know where they are if you want to read them and yet they're not on your shelves.

I live in a very small temporary space right now and having a really small set of shelves for books has made me examine my book habits a lot. I get rid of almost all trade papaerbacks, all best-sellers that will glut library shelves until the end of time, and most fiction. I keep trivia books, old paperbacks with amazing covers, reference books and books I'm still wanting to read. I also do the "get two leave one" plan where if I bring two books home (booksales here are AMAZING) I have to give one to the hospital thrift store where I will really hope it will make someone as happy as it made me.

Sometimes having a buddy nearby to be the judge and jury for your decisions can be helpful -- for me it often is with clothes -- make a case for each book you want to keep that doesn't fall into your "keep" category and have them rule on it. You can decide whether the judge's decision is final or not, but it makes the process more sociable and I think encourages you to think more about why you want any one particular book with you.

Then again, you should ignore my advice because I have 20-30 years of the New Yorker stashed away at home.
posted by jessamyn at 1:07 PM on February 10, 2006

Then again, you should ignore my advice because I have 20-30 years of the New Yorker stashed away at home.

Oh, thank god it's not just me. Heh.

Wrt the question, I'm not sure I really have much helpful to add, except to ask if it's really your books you need to clear out. What if you dealt with other clutter? Is there a particular reason why the books have to go, especially when deciding which to keep and which to let go seems so fraught? What would happen if you go rid of other things which feel weighty, like old clothes or various other miscellanea?

Me, I just keep buying more bookshelves. On the other hand, I've 1. Only moved once in the last fifteen years, and 2. That was just down the hallway.
posted by jokeefe at 1:28 PM on February 10, 2006

Many people here have given this even more thought than I (something I am thrilled to find possible), so I'll only share the simple rubric I developed when I was doing more purging.

If I am not going to
a. reread it
b. use it as a reference, or
c. recommend and loan it,
I don't keep it.

It's helped me get rid of a lot of books. On the other hand, now that I'm not planning to move any time soon, I look back with regret on the many books I've given away. I basically wish I had kept everything except the outdated current affairs and textbooks and mass-market fiction. I find myself wishing I still had copies of certain titles which I would never have been able to predict wanting again.
posted by Miko at 1:29 PM on February 10, 2006

I would approach it in much the same way as OmieWise above. Pick a number of books you would like to own when this is done. Let's say, 100. Now, go through your books and add them to the KEEP pile until you have 100. Now keep going through them, but if you add any more to the KEEP pile, you have to remove one from it as well. When you've gone through all your books and have picked the "best" 100, get rid of the rest. Don't look at them - don't think about them - just get rid of them. (If you want to cheat a little and expand the KEEP list to 110 books, that's okay too. The important thing, for major purges, is that it is a KEEP list rather than a GET RID OF list.)

Once they're gone you'll still have 100 books that make you happy, plus lots of empty shelves upon which to put new books.
posted by jellicle at 1:34 PM on February 10, 2006

When I cleaned out my books, I put the ones I weeded out in a box in the front hall to go to the used bookstore. It took almost a year for them to actually get taken there. (Heh.) But I'm glad it did, because that gave me time to remember I wanted to keep a couple and retrieve those; and when I grabbed a book off the shelf every now and then and realized I didn't want it anymore and it was just taking up space - I had a box all ready to toss it into. Think of it like the "trash bin" on your desktop: it's not really gone until you empty it. I put books in that box that had some sentimental value and I was reluctant to give them away, but when I realized I didn't miss them - out of sight, out of mind - it was so much easier to let them go.

So I'd say immediately get rid of the ones you know you won't want, for sure, but if you have the space, put aside in a box the ones you're not *quite* sure you want to ditch. If you haven't gone looking for them in six months or a year, get rid of them. If you have a pang over one of them during this time, you can go back and rescue it. (This trick works similarly for closet cleaning, btw.) In the meantime, you can enjoy your newly neat, cleaned-out bookshelves, and use them to show yourself how much nicer it is to have less book clutter!
posted by Melinika at 1:49 PM on February 10, 2006

The most important thing I do to keep book clutter at bay is keep a list of every book I read. I realized at some point that the main fear that holds me back from giving away books is that I may not find them again. That list of titles and authors gives me comfort that at least I have some way of finding a book again if I need to.

Otherwise:
- I keep about 15 all-time favorites and special books. Inherently my criteria here is pretty stringent, so the stack has always been small.
- My to-read pile consists of the most appealing 5 books in the following categories: Borrowed from Others, Borrowed from the Library, Recent Gifts/Purchases. As such, the turnover here is pretty quick -- if I try out one of these and it doesn't grab me, it goes back to the library, the lender, or into the "to sell on Amazon" pile. The new books stay in good condition that way, and every 6 months or so I list a bunch on Amazon when I know I have the next week available to go to the post office and ship them.

As for what to do with previously-read shelved stuff, I just keep it until I find myself moving, and then I skim off a bunch to sell or donate or store in boxes for later dates (e.g. children's books). I don't like to spend a lot of time on this part unless I absolutely need to reorganize. Better to spend my time actually reading the books than shelving and cataloging them.
posted by xo at 2:07 PM on February 10, 2006

You could send them to the Inside Books Project.

I always tend to give mine to friends on a permanent loan basis.
posted by zonkout at 2:32 PM on February 10, 2006

On kind of a meta note: To some extent, I think de-cluttering involves recognizing that regret is part of life, and being OK with that. Yes, I've given away books that I now often wish I still owned. But I've also screwed up relationships, made iffy career choices, etc. -- you suck it up and move on. If you try to cling to *every* *single* *thing* (material, spiritual, or emotional) that you might need one day in the totally hypothetical future, you're going to end up bogged down in a lot of stuff.
posted by occhiblu at 2:34 PM on February 10, 2006 [10 favorites]

I can only tell you what has worked for me.

I would like to develop a system for getting rid of them that will have a very practical, behavioral, methodical approach to the emotions that compel me to keep them.

I realized that I like having books. I like having books as much, sometimes more, than reading them. I like being around books, and I like being in homes that have books. And I have made peace with myself that I will always have books that I haven't read yet or may never read. And I accept that some of my book attachments are totally irrational. Will I ever read the Icelandic version of the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings in Swedish? Probably not. That's ok. Even rational, analytic people can base decisions purely on emotion. Heck, a friend of mine has a entire bookshelf full of books about how to deal with clutter--organizing it, getting rid of it, and the emotional reasons for accumulating it.

Most people I know already have a system for dealing with excess books, but they only employ when they have to move into a smaller space. How did you decide which books to keep and which to get rid of when you moved?

Here are my strategies for dealing with books:

Space has a direct effect on book retention, so these are the rules I've set regarding space:

1. I will not buy anymore bookshelves, thus ensuring finite space to store the books. When the shelves are getting full, then it's time to cull.

2. I will not store them in boxes. If I'm going to take it off the shelf, then I'm going to get rid of it.

How do I choose which books to keep? I ask myself, of the books that I have, how many represent my insecurities? I'm not talking about self-help books here, but books that represent an emotional facet of myself that I'd desperately like to change. That is, which books represent that fantasy version of myself (why yes, I am an expert in Latin American literature!), the person I think I should be instead of the person that I really am?

And I've realized that any "but..." statement I make to myself is just a rationalization. "But I'll put it next to my nightstand/in the bathroom/in my backpack/on the table, then I'll read it." Sure, but then what do I do with the book I've had to remove from nightstand/bathroom/backpack/table to make room for this one?

One category of books is the ones I haven't read yet.
Two years is my rule of thumb. If it's a non-reference book and I've had it more than two years, then I get rid of it. If it's a reference book or a cookbook that I haven't consulted in more than two years, then I get rid of it.

how does one estimate likeliness to read
In this equation, "likeliness" is a constant, not a variable. Likeliness=near nil.

Books that I have read
Do I take the book of the shelf, open it, and start reading it again? Does it make me smile? Do I change my body position so that I can read the book more comfortably? No to any of these questions? Off the shelf.

there is the large, amorphous category of books I hold on to for some sentimental reason
As long as I chose to keep it on the bookshelf, then I'm not going to stress about it too much, whether it's sentimental or not. In a few years, other books may have gained more sentimental value and these books will be taken off the shelf. Or maybe not. Maybe I'll choose to schlep them across the Pacific when I move to New Zealand.

This is a painful process. And I hate dealing with it. So, to prevent dealing with this too often, I have seriously cut back on buying books. I will not buy a book unless I have specifically go into the bookstore to get that book. If I see a book that I like, then I jot down the title, and request it from the library when I get home. If the library doesn't have it, then I can make the decision whether to go back and get it.
posted by luneray at 3:59 PM on February 10, 2006 [1 favorite]

If you try to cling to *every* *single* *thing*...that you might need one day in the totally hypothetical future, you're going to end up bogged down in a lot of stuff.

Totally true, and I endorse it. But I want to point out why I have regrets about giving books away and why I, at least, keep a real lot of them. In addition to other things, I'm a writer and researcher. The convenience of having the right books to hand, in my living room, when I'm on fire to find that quote or get that data is far better than just knowing that the information is out there somewhere, putting it on a list, and looking for it the next time I'm at the library.

Because my books are not just possessions, but an aid to creative processes and livelihood, I don't feel as bad about keeping a lot of them around as others might. A lot of academic types feel the same way -- it's just convenient. Also, once you've annotated the books, they become even more valuable and very hard to replace. That's why I keep my crappy paperback Complete Emily Dickinson as well as the nice clean hardback I received as a gift: my seminar notes are in the paperback. But if I'm going to read from it while teaching, I'll take the hardback for durability. And so on.
posted by Miko at 4:18 PM on February 10, 2006

I feel your pain. I'm going through the same process myself just now. Moving. Curious the emotional pull of books.

That said, and with some overlap from previous commentators, here are some of the questions I've been putting to myself:

1) How hard is the title to get at the local library?
2) How hard to get through interlibrary loan?
3) How hard to replace at the bookstore?
4) How expensive to replace at the bookstore?
5) Can I get serious money if I sell it?
6) Can I replace seven volume Gibbon with the three volume?
7) How many essays in this anthology overlap that anthology?
8) Is my darling daughter ever likely to be interested in this?
9) Is this the standard work, or has it been superceded?
10) Can I get the information in this any other place?
11) Am I really likely to take up violin making at this stage of my life?
12) Is the book mere decoration or even, dare I say it, affectation?

And, worst of all:

13) Will someone love and care for this is I let it go? (A few years ago I saw two fine copies of Norman Douglas' How About Europe? and a slew of thirties vintage London Illustrated Newses on the last day of a library book sale.

Next day I found out that SOP was to junk whatever had not sold.)
posted by IndigoJones at 6:43 PM on February 10, 2006

I say don't.

Don't throw them away. If you have to then do it. If you're moving house. Or have a smaller house. Or whatever.

Otherwise don' t. They're not harming you. They make your house look nice. Better than posters. Leave 'em.
posted by TrashyRambo at 7:14 PM on February 10, 2006

If you're like me, many of the books you're thinking of getting rid of are older paperbacks. Libraries don't want them, used bookstores won't buy them, hospitals won't even take them. So it's hard to know what to do about them unless they're so decrepit you can recycle them in good conscience.

I very much second the notion that unless you have a particular favorite classic in a nice edition, get rid of anything you can find in Gutenberg. It's literally deadwood.
posted by zadcat at 8:06 PM on February 10, 2006

I keep books probably for too long, but I have a couple of categories of books I don't throw out, so maybe this will be helpful:

1) I have one specific academic interest, and I have about three shelves of a 3.5 foot wide bookshelf that are for Those Books. I also include there other books I obtained and read academically that I really enjoyed. I reread some of these, some of the time.

2) Books I re-read. There are some things that I know I will re-read. When those books are issued in compilation trades (which has happened with more than a few of them) I will pony up the cash for the taller, thinner, takes-up-less-space version of my well-worn friends.

3) I have a few "collector's items" that I wouldn't get rid of, and certain sentimental gifts. Of course, people who know me well get me great books all the time, so that eventually becomes a problem . . .but hey, at least it's not stacks of stale pretzels, right?

This is a really hard problem for myself and my husband, actually, because there are reams of books that I would just prefer he get rid of -- mass market paperbacks and such -- but everybody invests such different things into their collections that it's hard to bring the weight of my convincing powers to bear. My own personality is very caught up in my books, so who am I to judge? But eventually we do all have to make these choices. (Typically, when we move, because our friends hate us for the boxes labeled "books" and particularly for the ones labeled "hardbacks.")
posted by Medieval Maven at 9:02 PM on February 10, 2006