Day 24: My Library and De-Cluttering aka Downsizing for Biblioholics

Every so often throughout the year I post pictures of my library. It changes during the year, obviously, and honestly it's just a bit of self-indulgence. My books are my babies. :)

First, the pictures. And then we'll talk about the rest.

The big shelf. Really it's five sets of shelves, but I think of it as one shelf. It takes up the biggest wall in my room. The main difference you'll notice is the top of the shelves. I've gotten rid of the majority of my penguins.

There're a few more penguins on top of this shelf, but that's it. Also, not pictured, is the space beneath my television where I used to keep stacks of books that wouldn't fit on my shelves. No more! The ones that I kept are on my shelves, the others have found new homes.

It's a...

...multimedia...

...library.

The best picture I can get of my comics boxes. The closet is too narrow for me to get a shot from the front.

Manga on the shelf to the right of my bed.

What's left of the books under my bed! Just four rows! Admittedly those four rows go all the way across my bed, but still. I moved at least half of the books that were under my bed to my shelves.

The shelf at the foot of my bed.

More....

...of the...

...multimedia portion.

And the last shelf. With room on the bottom for more books! No more double rows!

Okay. I come from a long line of pack rats. When my grandfather died he had a two and a half car garage and two sheds full of things, plus the attic of his house. It was all neat - we're not talking Hoarders here, but it was a lot of stuff that he felt would be useful one day.

I don't have any pictures of it, but I used to live in a room with boxes and boxes of books. I literally had no room to even set up a bed frame. And I hadn't even read the majority of those books. It wasn't about enjoying the books, because I couldn't. It was about having them. They were *mine* and I couldn't let them go.

I have my own theories about why that was, having to do with my step-father and a whole lot of unpleasantness, but the end result was that it has taken me until the last few years to be able to get rid of books without panic making me literally sick over it.

Now I can read a book and decide whether to keep it or not based on my enjoyment of it and not irrational fear that giving it up means I'm losing something. I can treat my books the way they're meant to be treated - as things that I enjoy, but just things in the end.