We are remodeling our guest bedroom into an office/library/bedroom. We have decided to line one wall with tall bookcases and put a nice desk by the window for my WFH days. We are going to get a sleeper couch instead of just a bed to leave more room. I think we decided that 4 bookcases should hold all of the books we have boxed up in the remodel. H also has the walls of his office lined with bookcases.
I pass any books on that I read to my D’s and tell them to pass them on to others unless the book is special and I want to keep it. I probably read half of the books on my Kindle now versus a hardcopy.
It’s sad but used books really have very little value. When I went fully digital I took 3-4 carloads of books to a used book store and got maybe $50 per load. It really wasn’t worth the effort and for the last couple loads I just tossed them in the recycle bin.
Anyway, I agree with the plan of giving your H one room to store his books. It seems like a perfectly reasonable compromise to me and H does sound like he’s becoming a hoarder. If he resists then some therapy might be in order.
Also has he ever tried an e-reader? There’s so many benefits I would never go back to physical books. Larger fonts (tremendous quality of life improvement when reading), night mode for reading in bed, syncing across devices (sometimes I’ll continue reading a book on my phone when waiting for a doctor, dentist, etc), downloading several new books to have available when traveling plus being able to download more any time. The only thing I really miss is being able to flip back through sections of a book, but other than that going electronic has been a huge benefit overall.
To me collecting such massive amounts of books is a form of hoarding that way too many people dismiss as “it’s books! We love books!”. Just like any hoard or other “collection” it’s okay until it impacts your life or the lives of others. The tolerance level of course varies as to the amount of room in your life. But part of that is even if you have room for the books (personal tolerance levels) it squeezes out other possible things/activities that may come into your life. That space used up by static books/already read might be better used to try new crafts/adventures that move you forward in a much more positive way.
My grandfathe died with at least 1000 books on his multiple shelves around his home. I LOVED visiting his home with a treasure trove of stories on his shelves. But he was very free with his books. He used to laugh that he was sure that he started the town library. He’d loan out books that while never returned to him did end up at the small town library. Books are meant to be circulated–you gather the lessons from them and then pass them on to others.
I know Marie Kondo is a familiar name here but she has really good advice about keeping what you “love and brings joy” versus keeping everything. And books are a specific trigger for so many people (although she has it as her second tier). Maybe books are your “trigger” so not good for you to do second tier but “learning how to let go gracefully” is a good lesson to learn.
How do you think of them? Maybe this is semantics. And I’m only talking books I’d actually save to my personal library shelf. I can’t think of any book (off hand) I’ve ever read that I valued that I didn’t learn something new from. At least one I would put on a shelf to save.
Someone asked how did hundreds of books end up in a dumpster…
Estate house is hours from those of us clearing it. Help clearing it runs $5k a day (includes the dumpster). UHaul for the things to be saved is full. House needs to be cleared ASAP so destroyed carpets can be pulled out. Town recycling only includes paper – you have to cut the pages out, which still leaves the covers.
There is no space for bringing anything non essential back.
There is no time to sort through it all.
There is no money to pay other people to do it.
The books themselves are many things : old, niche, smelly, decayed, boring, common. There are hundreds of titles of the same subject areas. There is no library or goodwill or thrift shop or used bookstore that needs even 50 books on (whatever) let alone 75 or 100.
All of us imagine there is some fairyland place where every bit of our old, outdated, regular stuff is useful…but that is largely an illusion.
I’m sorry it’s that way for you. We just do the best we can with the resources that are available.
When I cleaned out my parents’ house which they had lived in for 50+ years and crammed full of stuff I don’t think we threw any books away. My brother is a bit of a book hoarder himself so he took a bunch of them. We threw away plenty of other stuff that was trash and I made at least 5 runs to the Salvation Army with kitchen stuff and other still useable items. I took stuff and my sister took stuff and my brother took stuff. Honestly I probably took home too much stuff. None of us lived in our hometown any more. It wasn’t a hoarding situation, but there was so much stuff. My mom was a saver for sure. Not a whole lot of fun to do, but we had a deadline to get the house ready for the next buyer, a neighbor. We just did it all ourselves, but again not a hoarding situation or any water or smoke damage or anything. We didn’t do an estate sale or anything, just pitched in and cleared it out. I was amazed that the neighbor who was buying the house wanted the old carpets. They were ancient and pretty ratty, but she said just to leave them so I did. I think clearing out that house was one of the hardest things I ever did. Certainly one of the most emotional. And my mom was only moving into a retirement place. My dad had died, though.
Books are paper and can be recycled with other paper is the main thing. I remember being a little surprised and initially dismayed when I saw the big roll out recycling bins at our library full of old books that were not good enough to be donated to the Friends of the Library for the book sale. Some were mildewed or had water damage or were drawn in with crayon, etc. Once I wrapped my head around the idea that they could be recycled it really kind of freed me from that overly precious attitude that you have to keep all the books. My brother did not get that memo, though, and kept so many books. He has a big collection himself, too.
Please…if you have old books…don’t just take them to your library book friends, and burden THEM with sorting through and disposing of them. These non-profits have to pay for this if over their usual limit…and it cuts into the profits for their users.
So…contact them first. We did that with my friend’s books and the library book friends graciously declined any books at all.
But as with @greenbutton it was very costly to move thousands of old hardbound books to that recycling…and cut into the profit our friend made selling her house.
And fairy place cities that have used bookstores that will take anything, endless volunteers to sort and transport books to a “recycling” center that will take books, etc etc
It’s wonderful if you have these resources - Kant cities don’t. Or people don’t have cars to transport. Or a big bag of books is too much for an 85 year old can get to a car . So. Many. Reasons.
I think some people - not saying anyone here - like having many books in their homes because they think it makes them look intelligent and well-read. Whether they are or not, it gives off that illusion. Flame me if you want, but I think there can be - again, not saying anyone on here - a level of pride involved in owning and displaying lots of books. Books only have educational value if someone reads them. And, IMO, not all books have educational value.
Agree with others that leaving a huge number of books (or a huge number of anything else) results in a burden to someone.
Every time one of these types of threads comes up, I have a huge desire to purge. Even though I don’t have much, “stuff,” of any type at all anymore.
I think the image thing could be true, in certain communities. In our social circle, (i.e. academics and homeschoolers) it would be unusual NOT to have a house full of books, so no one is getting any image points for having books.
More importantly, we USE our books all the time, literally. Some of the confusion on the thread seems to be between people who imagine “books” as mostly novels that are read once- for which we use the library- and those like my spouse and I who use books in our house literally every day for research, reference, and pleasure.
Most of our large collection are not novels, and most of the novels I do own, I have read 4-10+ times. If I only read a novel twice, I didn’t like it much. Same for D17. A large percentage of our books are out of print as well, so it is very difficult to find them in inter-library loan. We have many rare books useful in our fields which is different from someone just buying lots of contemporary novels, reading them once, and sticking them somewhere. We have many specialized academic and reference works which you don’t “read” once, but use regularly. Someone upthread mentioned “keeping every book you read.” Goodness, almost all the books we have read in our lives came from the library. The thousands in our house are a small fraction of what we (or our children) have read overall.
So I think a house full of books that are NOT used could be hoarding --though it could also just be waiting for retirement to read them again as my dad was doing with his Sci-Fi, but he dropped dead of sudden cardiac death from a rhythm disorder at 61, so he didn’t get to them. But if books are organized and used, that is not hoarding, it is having a well-used home library. We purge regularly because we pack up and move all our books -ourselves- every few years including all the rare ones that have to be wrapped individually. I suspect some of the differences of opinion here are just related to how people use books and how often.
That having been said, our collection “sparks joy” in us which is why we prioritize it in our small home and through so many, many interstate moves. For other people, books are clutter. For us, with our occupations, hobbies, and personalities, they are part of daily life and are well-organized and prized.
I understand. I was not intending to pass judgment.
I was a homeschooler myself for six and half years. Even though I only have one ds and did not homeschool through all of his K-12 years, we still had LOTS of books during that season of life. However, when our season of homeschooling was over, we got rid of those books. I had no reason to hold onto them. Why would I keep a Pre-Calculus textbook? I also got rid of our microscope. Lol.
There was a time in my life when I had 300 cookbooks. We have had collections of art books and ancient civilization books and US history books and law school textbooks and accounting textbooks and economics textbooks. So I am not someone who has always been immune to holding onto books.
Hmm, I like books. Being surrounded by them makes me happy as does rereading them. But I admit that my tolerance for clutter is higher than most people’s. I dislike being overwhelmed by so much stuff so I can’t find items, but I also don’t like the sort of sleek, barren, minimalist aesthetic in other people’s homes, let alone my own home. Books are cozy and comforting. I would probably be annoyed as the OP by husband’s stacks, but for me that would be about sharing spaces and compromising so that we are both comfortable and not really about an aversion to clutter
Like sursumcorda, if I have only read something once or twice, I probably didn’t like it much. However, unlike sursumcorda, I mostly own novels, and it is those books that I reread most often. I have a much easier time purging nonfiction, which I am far less likely to reread than novels, short story collections, and poetry. Purging textbooks or books that I only used at a certain time of my life has been pretty easy. All those books like What to Expect When You are Expecting and 1-2-3 Magic or whatever are long gone! Most of the board and picture books that I read to my children before they could read were also easy to give away though I kept a few for sentimental reasons because I had very specific memory of a particular moment with my kid(s).
If I had a larger house, I’d probably have even more books, but my apartment is fairly small and the unit does not have much storage so even with bookshelves in every single room (except the bathroom!), I’ve reached my limit of what I can shelf. Thus I did make a conscious effort about ten or so years ago to replace my book buying habit with using the library even more. I’ve always done a combo of library + book purchases but in recent years, it has become quite rare for me to buy. I do still buy books that have gone out of print when I run across them in a used bookstore --only if I really loved them as a library book and I think it is likely that I won’t be able to get my hands on a copy later.
Other people like jewelry/fashion or going out to eat/travel or purchasing original framed paintings & sculptures or Volvos I think that is OK. And actually books are a whole lot cheaper than most luxury items. As for saddling my kids or others with the library when I die, well I suspect that my kids will want to hang on to at least some of my/their books because they all love reading as well. And considering all the things that might send them to a therapist’s couch when they are adults, I think their mother’s love of books and clearing out our apartment will be the least of their worries. They’ll deal with it or pay someone to deal with it. Shrug. I’ve spent a lot of years cleaning up after them!
I think that is OK. And actually books are a whole lot cheaper than most luxury items. As for saddling my kids or others with the library when I die, well I suspect that my kids will want to hang on to at least some of my/their books because they all love reading as well. And considering all the things that might send them to a therapist’s couch when they are adults, I think their mother’s love of books and clearing out our apartment will be the least of their worries. They’ll deal with it or pay someone to deal with it. Shrug. I’ve spent a lot of years cleaning up after them!