Books on books on books

I kind of promised myself this year that I will not buy more books until I’ve read all the ones that are already on the shelves. Well, that has gone completely out the window already. I’m about a dozen new books purchased this year, and it’s only been a month! There is literally no more room on my two IKEA BILLY bookshelves. I’ve resorted to stacking the news one horizontally on top of the books already there.

In my defense, I do tend to read all of the new books that I buy. But with shelf space becoming an acute issue, I soon will have to make a decision: either buy and create more shelf space, or donate a portion of the books. Because let’s face it, I’m not going to stop buying new books. That’s just not happening.

Donating the books will be easy: I work in a campus library that takes donations. The hard part will be figuring out which books to donate. That’s when the emotions and sentimental value kick in. Marie Kondo doesn’t have a solution for this: what if everything sparked joy? A more useful standard would be to toss anything that have not been touched/used in the past 12 months. The likelihood of such a book ever being touched again is near zero.

I previously had dreams of stuffing as much books and shelf space as possible into my room. A wonderland of books, if you will. The coziness scale will certainly be off the charts. However, that would clash against a strong sensibility of mine: cleanliness. It’s a simple equation: the more stuff you have, the more difficult it is to maintain it.

This is why I’m kind of rethinking about getting a second car. Sure it’ll be fun to have a different kind of car to drive around, but it will be two times the effort (and costs!) to maintain. That’s a tremendous time investment, even for something I am deeply passionate about.

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And dab.

Minimalist versus the utilitarian

Back in my early twenties there was a time I was quite fascinated with minimalism. Growing up my family was decidedly poor so it wasn’t like I had a lot of stuff anyways, but the idea of having as little worldly possessions as possible appealed greatly to me then. Computer technology have allowed us to digitize practically everything; items that would otherwise take up massive amounts of space like books and CD collections can now all be stored on our devices.

The iconic image of Steve Jobs sitting in his living room with nothing but the bare essentials, an utter lack of furniture save for an extraordinarily ornate lamp. That picture was the primary inspiration back then for me to begin decluttering my life: physical books were tossed out in favor of digital, old CDs and cassettes got converted to MP3s (wish I had kept those, honestly), and reams of accumulated car magazines put into the recycling bin.

Unfortunately (or fortunately) it never got beyond that - I love material things far too much. The brief flirtation with minimalism was merely a motivation to basically clean up my room, which in hindsight I don’t suppose it’s a negative. Indeed I do tend to accumulate a myriad of items and knickknacks over time, figurines and ornaments that provide inspiration for my artistic endeavors. For example up on my shelves are a few vinyl albums on display, even though I don’t have a record player. Physical books, too, have returned in my favors in recent years, and those simply pile up after having read them, and aren’t likely to be read again.

A year ago I performed the KonMari Method of cleaning to all my belongings, and 10 full-size trash bags later my living space was renewed and refreshed. Fast-forward to the present and the accumulation creep has returned. I’ve done well to not purchase any new clothing, but the amount of books have increased exponentially, and various souvenirs from trips have materialized on the shelves. It’s all maintained neat and tidy, though from a perspective of utility it’s highly wanting.

Rather than minimalist, my philosophy when it comes to things material is centered on utility: does it serve a purpose, and will I use it regularly. That ethos helps greatly limit my frivolous spending, though conversely I use it somewhat dubiously as justification for always upgrading to the latest and greatest iPhone. It’s a device I most frequently use, therefore it’s worth the relatively extravagant sum to get it.

So with that in mind, can I then for example force myself to donate away books I’ve already read, instead of them lining up my shelves? After all their utilitarian purpose is served and gone, and the reclaimed space would be quite lovely.

That’s going to be tough.

All the curves at the all the right places.