How many books sit on your shelf?
Which books do you never read?
How many shirts hang in your closet?
Which shirts do you never wear?
How many cups and glasses sit in your cupboard?
Which cups do you never hold?
How many blogs sit in your RSS reader?
Which blogs do you never visit?
How much dust sits in your life?
Which dust do you never clean?
You accumulate capital and it sits unused. How unfortunate! Why do you do this to yourself? Why do you buy things that you think you need or because people think you will like them — but they are never used? When and if they are used, they are never used again.
If you read the newspaper every day and then recycle it, why do you not do the same with books? What is it about a book (or a shirt, cup, blog subscription, or other capital dust) that you accumulate it and hold onto it?
If you can read an email message, reply to it, and delete it; why can’t you carry that model and mentality to other objects in your life?
Photo by brewbooks.
My office bookshelf contains about 50 books. The majority I haven’t read or opened in the past year. I wrote one year ago about giving up books and recognizing it is an illusion to be sentimental to their accumulation.
I don’t know why I still own them so I am slowly getting rid of them. It is healthy to get rid of stresses in your life.
I am also eliminating unread blogs from my RSS reader. Libraries and bookstores exist for finding and reading printed books; and Alltop and Google Blog Search exist for finding and reading blogs.
Join me. Reduce your clutter.
Improve your life.
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{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
@ariherzog Looks like your theme isn’t updating using the Livefyre comment count. I’ll get you the code for modifying this in the WP admin
@jennalanger If it helps you to diagnose, once I went into my WP admin and marked those 2 comments as spam, the count rectified.
Hi Ari
I love books, you can learn almost anything from a book.
I never throw them away… until now.
We are having a big cleanout and some of the books are going.
Lots of the books are going.
Looks as though my shelves will soon be empty.
Cheers Ari
It’s one thing to dispose of unnecessary stuff. Been there, done that.
It’s another thing to try to lead a crusade and try to corral other people into following your example. That’s dangerous. It’s also more than a little vain.
Do whatever it is you’re going to do. Let other people decide for themselves whether they want to follow your example. Trying to get under their skin is a sorry way to make an example of yourself.
@nooyawka212 Indeed. Do what you want to do. Join me or don’t join me. Comment or don’t comment. I only ask that you make up your own mind.
@hillers54 If you love books so much, why the cleanout?
@Ari Herzog
We need more room Ari.
Running out of space and I know that I won’t read many of the books again.
Time to move on.
I’m with you 1000%. I find it is a constant struggle to deal with the amount of information that hits my life on a daily basis. I always wonder how many opportunities I’ve missed just dealing with stuff that took up time but it not important.
so…what happened to your books now?how did you preserved them?i like reading but its my eyes that get tired easily..but i stay focused when what i an reading is enteresting…..
August 19, 2011 at 8:07 PM
I can’t agree more about the point of this article, Ari. I’ve been in a self-crusade to reduce any physical or mental clutter in my life for the last three months. I improved my productivity by pounds and leaps and eliminated 95% of all physical and psychological clutter from my life. I am also making sure not to build any of it back again. If it doesn’t fit my clutter-free life, I must quit!
Here is how I decluttered my workstation for example: http://www.willtoknow.com/workstation – How about showing us your workstation as well. Best!
August 19, 2011 at 8:09 PM
Lead by example not by preaching that I say. To each his own. @nooyawka212
March 24, 2012 at 11:24 PM
I can relate to this article because I also own a lot of books and a lot of it was just stored and hidden on boxes to avoid dusting and because I don’t have enough space to store them. If only I can also muster the ability to let go of my books then my life would be simpler. Getting rid of these books would really be a great stress relief provided that the next owner would take care of them more than I have took care of them.