Culling the Book Shelves

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I'm sure I'm not the only one who has trouble resisting the urge to buy books. But, for me, things are slowly changing, from necessity. Firstly, books are expensive and as much as I want to support authors, I'm needing to cut back. And my buying habits are changing. I'm finding plenty to read from my well-stocked local library, both hard copy books and e-books. I also find the library a great place to go to read. Then there's my book shelves. In the next year or so I'm hoping to move to a smaller home and so recently made the decision to cull my massive book collection. I decided I could retain only two book shelves, and so the cull began. I watched a useful YouTube video encouraging me to think of the book shelf as a container. What fitted into that container could stay, the rest had to go. The books I couldn't part with went back onto the shelf first. After that I put back any books that would fit. Once the shelf was full decisions had to be made. If a book wouldn't fit, I had to consider whether the book in my hand was more or less important to me than any of the books on the shelf. And so a successful cull began. The photo above shows the finishd result for my main shelf, with room to add a few more still in another room. Boxes of books went away to a local charity book shop. I still go to local seondhand book sales. But now I buy fewer books and then return them to the same charity, so someone else can enjoy them. My book life is much more organised now and, as I mentioned above, I'm a great supporter of my local library.