in which i go #konmari with the book line

I've been going through that tidying thing, with yet another skip about to depart from outside the house. Each one takes away another 6 cu meters of stuff and I'm now just around the point where something like the Kon-Mari method becomes practical.

I'm struck by the delightful Marie Kondo approach to tidying, which fundamentally involves only keeping things that spark joy. An obvious early part of the method is to discard things.

Yep. Hence the skip(s).

Then to work through various categories for tidying, in a specific order. That's about where I am now, although there's another part that says put all of a certain category together in one place. Okay. Could be difficult because of the sometimes haphazard nature of the prior 'filing system'.

My modest success so far has been to remove many items from indoors, hence the overflowing garage.

However, I could, with a little bit of re-arrangement, re-park a car in there now. I won't though, because I need the floorspace for 'sorting'.

Maybe I should get one of those hats?

Although, come to think of it, that'd only bring a short term spark of joy.

And that brings me to books. For some years now I've gone mainly digital with books. That's except for gifts or books requiring obvious pictures or diagrams. The Kindle works well for me and the ability to swap between devices like Kindle to iPhone to MacBook, creates a great flexibility, with the Kindle giving a pretty good reading experience as well as an ability to change typeface when the going gets tough.

So what to do with the thousands of real books? I decided that most can go. A few have a special history (spark joy), some are immensely practical and used, but many of the rest have already made their way to the local charity shops. I tried using a couple of those recycling points for books. One was completely full and the other only allowed books to be posted in about two at a time. Perhaps a sign of the times?

I can understand the TV cliché of ostensibly learned people sitting in front of big bookcases, but the digital native in me doesn't operate like that.

By the time I've stored, say, 1000 books, that's a lot of space consumed with paper.

I had several ex-indoor bookcases in the garage filled to the brim with stuff, but in the end decided it was better to also add the shelving to the skip.

Curation over quantity. Sparking the Joy.