It’s that time of the week again, time to bring you up to date on my decluttering journey. It is lovely when I hear from you that you are enjoying this series. Today I am moving into the Living Area and targeting the bookcases. The pressing reason for this is that my Hunkydory Cardmaking Collection has grown over the last year by such epic proportions that I am still overloaded in the Craft Area.
These are amazing products that I will most definitely be using so they absolutely are not going to be minimised, however, they do need to be sensibly stored and the bookcases seem the ideal spot for this. When I look at the books if I am honest about 80% of them are not used. There are hardly any works of fiction there anymore as we always read novels on the Kindle, it saves space and allows us to have multiple books on the go if we choose on one handy-sized device. I always tend to have an easy reading chic-lit and a work of historical fiction on the go at any time (I’m about to choose a Christmas read from the first category and I’m up to number 7 of Anne Perry’s William Monk Series for the second if you are interested) and sometimes add into the mix some sort of self-improvement guide and maybe one of the classics if I have decided to re-read one.
I did have the original Kindle but I got the Paperwhite for Christmas (or maybe my birthday?) last year and I absolutely love it. I just need to put my tablet and YouTube down long enough to get more reading done 🙂 From the books that are left, there are some that are out of date, of course unlike fiction non-fiction often has a shelf life especially in the technology category and other books just belonged to a previous version of myself. Michael doesn’t have any books to purge but then he has been a digital reader far longer than me and therefore only has a very small collection of physical books. So it’s time I made the most of the spoons available and got cracking I think…
Large Books
So, My larger books were filling two shelves. Now they don’t even take up a whole shelf. There are three books at the very left of the shelf that are Michael’s and the rest are mine. If I am honest there are still some of the larger books to the left of the shelf that may still make a cut but I am happy with the clearing out I have done. The good news is that after clearing just two shelves I have managed to put my Hunkydory overflow kits on a shelf.
My Hunkydory Collection
You will notice some of the collection has been loaded into display books. My original intention was to do this with the whole collection but what can I say Hunkydory kept launching beautiful collections so fast that I couldn’t keep up. Remember I still have all the sets I showed you on the purple trays in this post. But the pile on top of the cupboard that had since turned into two piles are all now on the shelf which makes me very happy. This job took me the best part of a day on and off between brakes but I did Scan in the cover sheet of each kit to my Evernote Craft Inventory Folder do I do have a much clearer idea of what I actually have.
So what books did I purge?
Education
I really should have taken some before photos (bad blogger) but I cracked on whilst I had the energy. One set of books to go are these:Before I went to full-time University I completed two modules at the Open University. I think I was someone who grew into learning. These were the resources for the third module I was going to work on but then I made the decision (after being motivated by a then-colleague) to go to University proper and gain my degree in three years. Something I have never regretted. I have been hanging onto these books ever since thinking it would be good to read them. About fifteen years have passed and I still haven’t read them so I think we all know I won’t.
Opera
As I have mentioned before I have a very broad taste in music which includes Opera. X amount of years ago I collected these magazines and CDs:I casually flicked through the magazines when I got them and listened to quite a few of the CDs but since then they have survived various small culls and have not been looked at again. If I’m honest these days I am more likely to ask Alexa to play music or watch TV. When it comes to Opera I would much rather watch it because the dramatic performance is of equal importance to the music I believe. Funnily enough, when it comes to orchestral music I much prefer to watch the orchestra on TV than just listen. I think maybe my visual sense takes priority over my hearing. Don’t laugh but I can only listen to the radio if I know what the D.J looks like, that can’t be normal lol… I will probably see if my parents want these so they technically may not be leaving the house!
History
Another category of books I reduced was my history section, these are the books I have cut so far:In this case, it is simply that if I want to find out some facts I look them up on appropriate websites or just Google them. I am still interested in my Genealogical research even though I confess it has been a few months since I did any of it. I am still really interested in history in general too. I have to say though it has taken me a couple of days to just move these books around due to the Fibromyalgia symptoms so I think in every sense it is a perfectly legitimate plan to spend more time with the internet and less with physical books. Having said that though I didn’t get rid of them all did I so I’m obviously still drawn to them.
Well in some ways I feel like I have slightly failed as I have only managed to clear two shelves from the two bookcases. The fact that I had to clean them due to the dust that had gathered is a statement in itself. Although I have technically solved the problem as the Hunkydory Paper kits are all now stored I need to carry on and work through the rest. It would be nice to store my little books on shelves properly too so next week’s Midweek Minimise will probably be the second part of the mini-library unless some more pressing storage problem arises. Well, Christmas is just around the corner so there is every chance…
Until next time,
Gentle Hugs,
Susan
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