May I begin by apologizing for the ridiculous number of bulleted lists in this post? Thank you. The Purge-O-Rama could likely stretch into a full year’s worth of posts, so I will spare you most of it and skip to the areas that tend to be hardest for me to purge.

Books.

I know. Hold your breath. Take a moment of silence while I try to collect my thoughts on this most sacred of cows.

I have a HARD time letting go of books. If you have unlimited space, time for reading/ rereading, and weight allotment for moves, please keep every blessed book you want.

For the rest of us, books tend to multiply~ especially when you have kids in grade school with the little book club fliers and book fairs that roll into town.  I am an English teacher, so it is practically a professional requirement that I have compulsions about books; HOWEVER, I do not have unlimited space or time or weight allotments. I am kind of afraid to count our books. We have seven bookcases packed to the brim, along with my seven banker boxes of professional books and Matt’s ten boxes of professional books. (And I won’t count the stacks next to my bed.)

How I tackled our books:

A.   I left Matt’s books alone. Whether this is  out of respect or laziness, I’ll let you flip a coin.

B.   My professional books: my books are organized into rough teaching categories in boxes: American Lit, Brit Lit, World Lit, Reference, Thesis, Shakespeare, and Class sets. Before we moved here, I had whittled down my professional books to: (A) books I love and use regularly (B) books that have extensive notes written in the text (C) books that are extremely expensive to replace or that I bled on (thesis books– I’m sure one day I will release these books back into the wild, but for now, I can’t part with them).

C.   Kids books: UGH

Here is where I hit a wall. I get wishy-washy, irrational. I say things to myself like:

 My kids need to have access to as many books as possible. I want them to love reading! I need forty-two reference books on dinosaurs—who cares if no one, including me can decipher the scientific jargon. This is their lives I am sorting out!

          Clearly, I need to take a valium and be told to go lie down.

But alas, I stuck with it. Here are the questions I asked (most applied to both kid and adult books):

1. Is this book a LIFETIME favorite that I want to tote around to who-knows-how-many-duty-stations so I can read it to my grandkids one day? (Olivia the annoying pig out. Wind in the Willows in.)

2. Is this a book that someone will likely read or reread in the next six months?

3. If I have multiple books on the same subject, can I whittle it down to two or three max?

4. Can I pass this book along to someone who will benefit from reading it? (We have a lot of non-fiction books in this category on faith, finances, parenting, etc.)

Did I involve the kids? Kind of. I gave them a day’s warning. What I said: “Hey everyone, I’m going to be going through our books to pass some along before we move.”  What they heard:  HIDE YOUR FAVORITE BOOKS! MOM’S ON A ROLL!  I guess I could have sat there and asked them about each book, but then we would have missed our flights to Japan and purged a total of one book. When kids ask me about a  missing book in the future, I will chant, “LIBRARY!”

I may or may not have given away books that annoy me. When you have four kids, the acquisition of books needs to be handled like shoes and toys.  One in, one out and the less annoying the better.