Depending on how long you’ve been following my blog posts for, you may or may not know that I’m a minimalist. I try to only own stuff that brings purpose or joy. And for the most part I’d like to think I do a good job at that.
For a book lover like myself though, I tend to get carried away buying books! More often than not, I buy physical copies after walking into a bookstore with the intention of “not buying anything” (yeah, right) despite knowing I a) should read what I already own and save money in the process and b) that they won’t actually have a place to go until I’ve read what I already own.
I still donate almost all of my books after reading them. That hasn’t and won’t change.
So some back story. When I stumbled across minimalism, I discovered a glorious website titled theminimalists.com which helped my journey. The inability to sleep a few nights ago led me to Netflix, and to the documentary titled Minimalism, featuring the guys behind the website I mentioned above. And while watching it I felt a wave of inspiration to go through what I own and see if there’s anything I don’t often use anymore. There was a few random bits and bobs, but mostly I realised something.
The few books I’ve read and loved enough to want to keep, I keep in a draw, and don’t pay much (if any) attention to them. Honestly, I hardly even open the draw that they’re in. The space they’re taking up I could use to store things I actually use.
Which lead me to my next realisation: the feelings and love I have for those books will remain regardless of whether I keep them or not. If I want to ever read them again I can easily just get a Kindle copy, but I don’t feel the need to own something that I don’t often use.
When I first ventured into minimalism, I had so many books – a mixture of ones I’d read and ones I hadn’t. I went through them all and ended up with just The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, which at the time was my favourite ever book. I re-read it a few times until I was ready to part with it. I haven’t felt the desire to re-purchase it.
So, for now, I’ve put the few books in a small pile on my floor, and in the space where they belonged I’ve placed my yet to read books (which once I’ve got round to reading, I’ll be donating). I think I’m going to re-read these books first, but then I’ll part ways with them. There was also two books I’ve already donated that I realised I no longer have interest in reading.
I realise most book lovers dream of having bookshelves full so this post may seem a bit odd to some, but a space with not many things is my idea of calm so I hope you enjoyed reading this post 🙂
Georgia x
Georgia's Bookish Thoughts 