Book Bonanza! (...sorry): Dee's KonMari Adventure
When I tell
people in my life that I’m doing an extreme form of decluttering, I am
typically met with one of two responses: “Cool!” and “Oh, God I need to do that so badly.”
I think
that we Americans are well aware of our issues with owning more than we
actually need. We know that our basements, closets, and storage lockers are
stuffed with things that are unnecessary. When we do dig in and finally do the
work to sift through our countless items, and we dump garbage bags full of the
things we bought to donation stations, we feel a sense of accomplishment,
rather than loss. We know that we have done a good thing for ourselves by
getting rid of excess crap.
I have
found that this awareness is hurled out the window when it comes to books.
I have to
admit, I was a bit bored with the idea of “KonMariing” my books. I doubted it
would take me longer than an hour to do. They’re my books. I’m a lifelong bookworm and writer who has worked at
multiple Barnes and Noble stores and would have married the Beast on the spot
if he had offered me the library he had offered Belle. I have lovingly hauled my
little library in insanely heavy boxes and crates from apartment to apartment for years. There
was no way I was getting rid of more than…three?...of my beloved books. I even
decided to use the KonMari Book Day as an opportunity to re-organize my books
in a fun way, you know, to make the whole excursion worth my while.
I set down
a blanket on my floor for my books (because they’re too precious to be placed
on the bare floor!) and yanked every one of them out of their hiding places.
Then I lovingly stacked them on the blanket…and ran out of room. Almost
immediately, I began to realize that I may have been wrong. Not only was this
going to take longer than an hour, but I might actually have a legitimate pile
of books to get rid of by the end of this. As I pulled my books down from the
shelves and saw them in my hands, many of them for the first time since I put
them there, I noticed that I didn’t love a lot of the books in my collection. I
didn’t even like many of them.
What the
fuck?!
I tell you,
I make fun of Marie Kondo constantly, but this method continuously surprises me
by how goddamn effective it really is.
I, like
many of my bookworm brethren, take almost unnatural pride in my book
collection. And it is a collection.
If I had left my books on the shelf, ignoring the KonMari doctrine of the shame
pile, I probably would have glanced at the spines, pulled out one or two books
to get rid of, and checked “Books” off my list. My collection would have
remained intact, spread across four bookcases, (and my bedroom, and my office,
and my kitchen,) and I would have had dozens of heavy boxes to pack when we move
from here in July. No clutter lost.
But because
I adhered to the KonMari shame pile and handled my books one at a time, I saw
them for their individual value, rather than their volume as a collection, for
the first time in years. (ladies and gentlemen, the aesthetic SENTENCE break!)
And I realized that the idea of a Beauty
and the Beast library full of books is great, but if it’s a library full of
books I don’t really care about, then I…don’t…want the library.
I think my
inner bookworm just imploded.
Like all
arrogant twat waffles, I hate it when I’m wrong; especially when I’m proven
wrong by someone or something I didn’t take fully seriously before. Kondo’s
tone and her tendency to exaggerate the benefits of her method made it
impossible for me to truly take her seriously. But just like last week, when I
scoffed at her tone and missed the larger message of respecting your
possessions, I have to eat my hat.
Kondo
constantly and explicitly states that one must look at every individual item in
their life in order to truly take stock of what one values. I thought I had
learned that lesson with my clothing, but apparently I still had a mental block
when it came to something I thought I truly valued: My book collection. In
researching the KonMari method, I came across those angry anti-Kondo posts I mentioned
previously, and I noticed that many of them didn’t fully adhere to the method.
They went by room, rather than by category, or they kept their books on the
shelves while they sifted because they thought pulling
everything down that was already organized was a waste of time.
Well, I can
tell you now that following the KonMari method as closely as possible is vital to the success of my ultimate goal:
To live with less shit. If I hadn’t looked at my book collection individually,
as I said before, I would have kept the vast majority of it. I wouldn’t have
realized that I was really only holding on to my religious texts in order to
make my bookshelf (and, by extension, me) look smart and well-read. I wouldn’t
have realized that I had outgrown many of the writing instruction books I had
accumulated over the years, or that I’m not as interested in astrology now as I
was when I was a teenager, or that I had TWO FUCKING COPIES OF LIVING BIBLICALLY WHEN I KNOW
I HAD ALREADY GOTTEN RID OF ONE COPY A YEAR AGO.
Sorry. I
swear to God, that book clones itself.
Adesso, as I
added book after book to the laundry basket destined for Half-Price Books, I did
not feel a sense of loss. I did not panic because my glorious book collection was
shrinking. I felt better and better letting go of each old textbook and lost
interest.
Kondo puts
a special emphasis on books in her…book…and I think it’s because of people like
me who take pride in the volume of books they own. She claimed that getting rid
of your book collection, and looking at the ones you do keep, might help you
find your “true path” in life. I laughed at this. I mean, I understood the
point behind it—you realize what you’re really interested in by the books that ‘spark
joy’—but it just seemed funny. Could someone be so un-self-aware? Yes, I just
made up a word.
Well, I
didn’t discover a new passion, but I did learn something about myself. Whenever
I hesitated to let go of a book I didn’t really love, it was often because I was thinking of what someone
else would think if they saw the book on my shelf. If I keep these religious
texts, they’ll know that I like studying theology. If I keep my old Plato
textbook, they’ll know I’m philosophical. I can’t let go of classic literature
even if I don’t like the story—how will they
know I’m a literary intellectual?!
More than a
third of the books I ended up getting rid of served as nothing but monuments to
my own intellect. Like literary trophies, they took up space on my bookshelf on
the off chance that someone would study my books and think, “ooh, this girl is
so worldly and smart!”
I always
knew I had a bit of an ego when it came to my intelligence, but it took KonMari
to make me realize just how insecure I can be about it.**
I’m still a
bit angry with myself for holding on to so many useless books for sheer
intellectual narcissism, but I am glad I realized it, and can let it, and the
books, go. By the end of my Book adventure, I had a laundry basket full of
tomes. I turned to the books I decided to keep and realized that, holy shit, they can all fit on a single bookcase.
So, I
decided to do something that struck fear into the heart of every bookish friend
I told. I arranged my books by colour.
Not
alphabetically by title or author name. Not by subject. Not by series.
By colour, motherfucker.
If you’re
not the bookish type, I’ll spell it out for you: This is organizational
madness. Book series are separated and scattered about, fiction fornicates with
nonfiction, chaos reigns and Melvil Dewey curses from the underworld.
Many bookish
friends freaked out, as I knew they would. “How will you find anything?!” was
their rallying cry.
Enter my
fetish for organizing.
When I committed
to arranging my books by colour, I knew I would have one fuck of a time finding
a book if I didn’t remember what the spine looked like. I decided to make an
Excel spreadsheet of my beloved collection, arranged by title, with the book’s
colour category included. Because my collection was so diminished, it only took
me a couple of hours to do. A friend later recommended a phone app, Book Catalogue, to me, and I did that as
well. If I want to find a book of mine, all I need to do is look at my
spreadsheet or my app, and boom. Cloud
Atlas is in the yellow section. Five seconds of browsing, and book found.
Time for some semi-spiritual multi-genre adventures.
So, how did
the colour coded bookshelf turn out? Pretty damned gorgeous.
 |
| Ignore the chair with my laptop as I created my book spreadsheet. |
It’s not as
pretty as the Pinterest posts that inspired it, because it turns out that most
of my books’ spines are black, but I am incredibly happy. My book collection is
smaller than I ever thought it would be, but it is full of books I love, organized, and it
is pretty as fuck. It is also all for me.
Most people arrange their books the way libraries or bookstores do, because
said arrangements make it easy for people to find what they’re looking for. My
bookshelf isn’t organized for ‘people’ anymore. It’s organized for me, and full of books that I like. I no longer care if my bibliophile
guests happen to glance at it and can glean my intellectual prowess from it
(who even does that with friends’
bookshelves, anyway?)
Book day
was my most rewarding KonMari day so far. This week, I begin to tackle
Miscellany, or, as Kondo calls it, Komono,
so we’re in more varied territory, and I have a feeling it’s going to feel a
lot more like dreaded spring cleaning than tranquil de-cluttering. This is
going to feel like real work. This week, I tackle the “General” (dvds, cords
and remotes, pet stuff, etc,) and another obsession of mine in which my ego is
wrapped up: The Kitchen.
Pray for me, children.
Hours: 5, including the hours it took to create my spreadsheets/plug my books into my app.
Bags of Stuff: 1 laundry basket. And, new category,
Profit: $35
PHOTO MONTAGE!
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| My book pile, stacked up, from the shelves only. |
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| My ego-driven religious possessions. |
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| Why...do I have the Ohio Criminal Code from 2008...? |
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| This is a fun series, but I don't really love it. Those who read it know that it's essentially the same book, over and over again. I sent these to my mother, since we 'co-own' the series. Not pictured: the twelve hundred other books in this series. |
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| Here was a little conundrum. The first three books in The Vampire Chronicles are some of my favourite books of all time, and they have had a profound influence over my life. However, the rest of the series is rough, and THIS book was just...HORRIBLE. So, do I keep it because it is part of a series I love? Nope. I pitched it. |
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| There is no reason to hold on to playbills. I don't know a single person in the cast. I just love Phantom. Pitch it! |
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| Too lazy for the lazy couponer. |
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| Another bad habit of mine that I discovered: I buy joke books, read them once, and never read them again. |
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| This was the book that first got me into belly dance. I ended up keeping it for sheer nostalgic value. |
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| Of course I kept this. Are you kidding? |
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| My childhood Phantom book. I'll probably be buried with this. |
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| Writing books I outgrew. |
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| I SWEAR TO GOD, IT CLONES ITSELF. |
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| My cleaning inspired my husband to do the same with his books. He didn't arrange them by colour, but they look great! |
**All around my Facebook page, my friends are screaming, “No
shit, Sherlock.”
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