Hi,

So this past few weeks, I was getting to that point where I was feel cluttered from the amount of things I owned and also feeling anxious about the number of unread books I owned.

I have been inspired by Desira of Libri Labra and Marie Kondo and decided to go through my bookshelves.

 

This was a two step process for me. First, I unhauled the books I either knew I was never ever going to read or had read but wouldn’t read again. Thank you to the new Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. This show really kicked me into action and helped me not feel guilty about unhauling books. Once I got on board with this process, there was a lot a books I was unhauling!

 

 

This process was amazing. I feel refreshed. I got to reorganise my shelves — for the first time in forever — and am excited about the books on my shelves. Thank you Marie Kondo!

 

 

The Shelf Mastery project was created by Desira of Libri Labra who came up with this project to help resolve the anxiety surrounding unread books. As Deirdre says this process is about, “buying less, reading more and most importantly, feeling better”.

If you want to learn more about the Shelf Mastery project, you can go watch the announcement video.

There are two steps to this project. 1. Catalogue Your Library and 2. Setting Book Buying Guidelines.

 

Catalogue Your Library

As part of the unhaul process, I also took inventory of my library to actually take stock of how many books I own and want portion is read and unread. While this took forever, this was really confronting but in a good way.

 

Total Books: 684

Read: 256

Unread: 428

 

If you’re nosey like me, you can see my full  library catalogue. Also if you want to create your own library catalogue using Deirdre’s template, view my own library catalogue then select File then Make A Copy.

 

Setting Book Buying Guidelines

1. Buy no more than three books a month: Buying books is something I love to do and I know putting myself on a book buying ban I would fail after three months and go a head and buy 20 books — no joke. So I think this is fair.
2. Read series before buying more: I know there are a few of us out there who when finding a new series we know where going to love we buy all the books before reading them. So I am not going to buy the next book in the series until the read the one before it.
3. Use library: This ties into the pervious one, but if I need the next one the series ASAP and/or want to read a book I’m not 100% sure will be a new favourite I will see if the library has it before going out a buying it.

 

That’s all for me! I will check in each quarter to see how well I’m doing. 

Until next time, happy reading!

Dearna