Before the grocery bags, I had a moving box under my desk. It did not spark joy. It was annoying to sort through the books to donate every year, the box split, and books went everywhere. See? No joy.
I wrote a review about Marie Kondo's "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" back in 2015. Now, with her Netflix series enchanting the Twitterverse, it seems a good time to revisit my experience with it. Particularly the seemingly controversial advice about getting rid of books.
I have not re-read "Tidying Up," because my dad borrowed it when he visited me at Christmas, so it does not live in my house anymore. But watching the Netflix series reminded me that the book is meant to fundamentally change the way you view your possessions.
Bibliophiles have been frothing at the mouth about chucking their books after a meme circulated showing Marie Kondo saying something like, "Ideally, keep less than 30 books."
This isn't accurate. What the book DOES say is that Kondo herself does not own more than 30 volumes, but if books spark joy for anyone, and they have more than 30 books, it's fine. You can still use her method to guide the relationship you have with your possessions.
From Indiewire: Marie Kondo to Bibliophiles: No, You Don’t Need to Throw Away Your Books
"If the image of someone getting rid of books or having only a few books makes you angry, that should tell you how passionate you are about books, what’s clearly so important in your life. If that riles you up, that tells you something you about that. That in itself is a very important benefit of this process.” Kondo told Indiewire.
I've read almost a dozen books so far this year, and I'm not keeping any of them. It seems crazy, but here are a few reasons why:
1. Books are not sacred, romantic objects to me
It's possible that I think less of physical books because I get a lot of books for free. Many of them are advance review copies, so they're virtually useless after they've been read. Libraries and used book stores can't take them to re-sell.
For the books I do buy with my own money, are they really better off in my house? Normally not. The potential to re-read books is not high with me.
I don't believe books are imbued with the soul of the author or carry sacred stories that I should treasure forever by making room for them in my home. Once I absorb the information in a book, I have that information in my mind. It'll either be a memorable story, or I'll look back on the list of books I've read in a year and wonder what it was about.
2. The books I've read can be more useful somewhere else.
This seems logical to me, but why would you keep books on dusty shelves in your home when they could be out in the world educating and entertaining someone else? Why keep a book that you're not going to re-read when you could take it to a library or used book store to help the owners earn money for that place and keep it in business?
I was delighted to see some of my discarded books with $1 stickers on them the other day when I went to the library. If someone wants to purchase them, the library will benefit, if only by a few dollars. On my latest trip to the used book store, I exchanged books I've already read for some books that I haven't read, and it was completely worth it.
I think perhaps the people who hold on to books suffer from the sunk-cost fallacy when trying to part with books they'll never read. If you've spent money on a book, it seems a waste to get rid of it on the slim possibility you might want to read it, right? No. You can always buy the book again second-hand or check it out of the library if you truly miss it. I have never once wished I hadn't gotten rid of a book that I purged from my collection, and I've never had to repurchase a book because I missed it.
3. Books take up space
Since I've lived in small-ish apartments for my entire adulthood, there's not a lot of space for a lot of books. I have one bookshelf that houses some cookbooks, and the top of a cube storage unit for my "to-read" pile. Dan has another very small bookshelf. Beyond those boundaries, books are nothing more than clutter.
Caveats
The one thing that was kind of disappointing about my experience with the Konmari method was, while it changed my attitude toward possessions in general, it was easy to slip back into old habits of holding on to things that aren't books. "Tidying up" claims that once you go through the process of letting go to possessions that no longer spark joy, you will never need to go through that process again because it will change the way you view the things you choose to keep in your life. I have not found that to be true. Your tastes will still change, your style might change, and the things that you once enjoyed might not bring you joy anymore!
I still have to go through my possessions about once every other year or so in order to shed things that no longer bring me joy. I've found it particularly true with clothes.
For books, I take those lime green grocery bags once or twice a year to the used book store and the library, and the ARCs get recycled if visiting family or friends go through them and don't want any. It's the system I've found that works for my life.
If you find immense value in holding on to tons of books, you do you. And please, for the love of God, take some of my books. But if you're going to tackle "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up," do it with an open mind, and be prepared to view your book collection in a different way.
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