![\"\"](\"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/Books-300x200.jpg\")
In a previous blog post, I talked about trying to get rid of as much of the \u201cstuff\u201d I have cluttering my home as I can. Some of it\u2019s relatively easy to sort through and dispose of.<\/p>\nIn a previous blog post, I talked about trying to get rid of as much of the \u201cstuff\u201d I have cluttering my home as I can. Some of it\u2019s relatively easy to sort through and dispose of.<\/p>\n
When my grandchildren were babies, I bought a fair amount of equipment for them for when they visited. Now that they\u2019re older, I\u2019ve already eliminated a lot of it, donating things to women\u2019s shelters and groups helping resettle refugees.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve gone through several boxes of old photos in the process of scanning them, and those will get tossed once I\u2019m done with the project. A couple of boxes of financial records dating from well before the three-year period we supposedly need to keep have been shredded. I\u2019m still trying to figure out what to do with the boxes of stamp albums and loose stamps I inherited from several older family members.<\/p>\n
I always have the most trouble parting with books. I love books and I tend to hang on to all of the ones I\u2019ve enjoyed, found useful, or learned from over the years. Once the kids grew up and flew the coop, I turned the two upstairs rooms into my own makeshift library. Now, as I get older, I realize a time is coming when we\u2019ll be moving out of this house we\u2019ve lived in for 30+ years and I won\u2019t be able to take it all with me.<\/p>\n
Many\u2014most\u2014of the books have to go. It\u2019s painful letting go of them. So I\u2019ve developed a technique for deciding what to keep and what not to keep. I gather up a batch of books and bring them to my office, where they get sorted into three stacks. The criteria is asking each book: Will I ever read you again?<\/p>\n
Books where the answer is a clear no go in one stack. A few I\u2019ll want to dip into it again before I decide. And even fewer I can glance at and know that this book is a keeper.<\/p>\n
As I\u2019m getting older and my life reading time gets more and more constrained, though, I\u2019m finding it easier to say that I\u2019m never going to read this book again. I read it once, and that was good, but enough.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t actually re-read all that many books because there are always so many new ones teasing me. At this point, I\u2019ve eliminated almost half of the library and I still have work to do. I don\u2019t have an actual goal except to get rid of all the books I know I\u2019ll never read again.<\/p>\n
Someday I may have to deal with all those books sitting on my Kindle that I\u2019ve read or are waiting to be read. But that\u2019s a problem for another time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a previous blog post, I talked about trying to get rid of as much of the \u201cstuff\u201d I have cluttering my home as I can. Some of it\u2019s relatively easy to sort through and dispose of. When my grandchildren …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,70,203],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-family","category-goals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2333,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2331\/revisions\/2333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmccullough.com\/kblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}