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Mentioned on a decluttering forum on Reddit that I finally Marie Kondo’d most of my book collection, thought I’d figure out what I had for photos and post about it here as well.

To be clear, I don’t have any objections to owning books… I just don’t have any particular attachment to them. The part that “sparks joy” is the reading, with only a few print copies I want to keep for souvenirs (personally autographed copies) or reference (mostly themed stuff I can’t easily get condensed into one relevant collection online, like story-universe-based cookbooks).

But it isn’t just the print books that needed decluttering. Before I started the process I had well over a thousand “personal documents” in my Kindle account, plenty for reading for sake of reading, but also far too many duplicates or reference books full of information I could easily find online (I mean, back in the day there was certainly value in keeping dictionaries and encyclopedias and how-tos near at hand, but with most ebook-capable devices also being internet-capable devices, any of these books that don’t also add entertainment value–Tough Guide to Fantasyland comes to mind–just feel like more clutter). Those had to go as well.

So… we go from sometime in the very early this century of having wall-to-wall shelves and still having so many books I had boxes of them under (and eventually behind) my bed

(This is not even close to a “before” picture as I wasn’t taking photos of the mess back then. 😉 Should still demonstrate what I had to work with though.)

To getting rid of series I’d completed, or decided I’d never continue, both to make cleaning around the bed easier and to make room for newer books.

To my first-ever ebook purchase in 2010 (Ur by Stephen King) and slowly replacing some of my print books with digital (mostly aimed at replacing copies that were falling apart rather than actually “decluttering” at this point)

To needing room for collectibles which went through their own cycle of buy/admire/donate-to-clear-space.

(That’s the cleanest my dresser’s been in years!)

To taking an interest in Virtual Reality in 2019 (the original Oculus Quest–just acquired the Meta Quest 3 last month!) and turning the need to declutter up to high gear. While I’ll never have the room for some of the really big games without picking another room to play in (nice thing about a standalone system, that), just being able to play Beat Saber without tripping or Paper Beast without having to hop in place on my bed to turn around is a plus.

And with that, my print collection is finally condensed to two fairly small bookshelves:

A small two-shelf “nightstand” that fits nicely under the table my VR gear currently sits on (DormCo/College Cube brand, wouldn’t mind getting another if floorspace allows but they seem to have discontinued the color I own), containing a couple of Doctor Who boxed sets and assorted Goodreads giveaways and crowdfunding titles stacked two deep, and a significantly larger one of a similar style (linked is one of a similar size to mine as the actual product appears to be out of stock or discontinued) containing the autographed books and themed cookbooks. Plus two other books, one I’m currently reading at home and one on my lunch break at work.

The eventual plan is to condense the books down to one unit, preferably the smaller one for reasons of floorspace though I haven’t checked the height of the cookbooks and might have to keep the larger instead.

Prior to this point I’d addressed my decluttering needs by listing nearly all of my remaining books on Goodreads and have been reading whichever titles the site identifies as the shortest–no series here so no worries about reading things out of order–as a means to get through them as quickly as possible. Now that I’ve condensed my collection this far I’m shifting focus to incorporate the need to digitally declutter. See, a lot of the ones from Goodreads giveaways are ones I’d recorded unboxing videos for and never got around to editing/uploading. While I want to finish off the ones that I know for a fact I don’t have videos for, my next step is to go through my backlog of unedited videos and start getting them onto my YouTube channel… starting with the oldest video, and if and when I come across one from Goodreads that should be the next book for me to read.

And as it happens, Faerie Ring has been uploaded to my channel for some time now.

Yup, as you might see from that coincidental thumbnail, I’m decluttering autographed copies as well. If I didn’t get it signed in person–found it in a thrift store or acquired it online that way–it doesn’t have the sentimental attachment and I just want my space too much to hold on to these “in case they’re worth money some day.” And I really can’t think of any other reason why I’d need to hold onto them any more than an unsigned copy.

With that, I also discovered I already have digital copies of some of the books that were shoved to the back of that nightstand. I won’t get rid of them yet… just until I’ve gotten far enough in my digital decluttering to make sure I don’t need to add a photo of the cover before uploading the respective video to YouTube.

After excising the duplicates and the “I can find this online” reference materials my personal document list dropped down to 670… and that’s assuming I haven’t missed any. There are still some on my computer that I didn’t send to my Kindle (yet) due to conversion requirements but I think now that I don’t have near as many to sort through I can delete the ones I don’t want before transferring instead of making them portable first.

Of course there is another shelf unit that needs decluttering, and that’s the one all the “to-be-donated” books are being relocated to. But as I’ve been dropping off a couple of books a week at a local outdoor library (once per day off since running errands takes me right past just such a place), emptying that is just a matter of time spent without acquiring more books to add to my collection. Well, without acquiring them too quickly 😉 as I don’t plan to quit the bargain bins or Goodreads giveaways or the like any time soon.