In which I finally (mostly) cleared off two shelves’ worth of books from the get-rid-of pile.

As mentioned elsewhere, I’m going to be backdating a bunch of these posts so I can “upload” them at roughly the same time as when I released the relevant books into the wild–seeing as it didn’t occur to me to start posting about it until a few years after I started on the site–but this would be one of the first that doesn’t need that backdating.

Because the relevant release happened on my previous day off from work.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been gradually reading books from my print collection, replacing them with digital copies (when possible) if I liked them enough to keep in some form and donating the print copies, and just outright donating if I didn’t like them enough to keep.

Naturally I could donate the books faster than I could read them, but when several months ago my parents went through a “spring cleaning” mode and decided to get rid of a bunch of books all at once, the get-rid-of pile increased considerably. So much so that I had to keep a set of bookshelves organized according to Bookcrossing status:

with the upper-most shelf (the open one in this photo) reserved for movies we wished to rehome, the next shelf being those that have been registered to Bookcrossing and labeled (and merely awaiting a time to donate), the next shelf being those registered but not labeled, and the final shelf being those that have not even been registered.

And despite this organization, I still kept ending up with piles of books on the floor in front of the shelf unit; short of keeping the two “registered” shelves packed full, there were simply too many books to fit on the bottom!

(Photo taken after a bunch of books had already been donated en masse.)

The problem is that I keep forgetting to register books as I read them, thus needing to constantly find room on the bottom shelf instead of being able to move to the next shelf up as I go. That and my preference for only labeling books ten at a time (so as to use one full sheet at a time) which of course requires space on the “labeled” shelf to move ten books up in the first place.

But finally, as of this past Monday, I managed to nearly clear off both the “labeled” shelf and the “unregistered” shelf.

I released the final labeled book, Soup of the Day, to a local outdoor library (the books remaining on that shelf, while also labeled, are not available for wild release; they are instead on reserve and waiting for my parents to pay a visit to the relative who has requested them).

I also made a trip to the local thrift store and donated en masse every mass market book that I have not yet registered, leaving only the oversized paperbacks and hardcovers to occupy space on the bottom shelf and clearing away the pile that had once again built up on the floor.

And after I got home and took this photo, I labeled another group of ten books. But rather than put them immediately on the appropriate shelf, I left them in a pile in the family room, as per my father’s request, so that my parents can grab a few to take on a trip with them and leave in whatever hotels they stay in along the way. Once my parents have made their selections and left for that trip, I can put the remaining labeled books on the shelf and determine if there is space enough to move up another ten books.