I think it’s pretty clear that we will keep accumulating stuff until we run out of room. Sometimes we continue even after we’ve run out of room. (That’s usually when people contact a Professional Organizer.) If you’re someone, like me, who has an abundance of of storage space in your home, then it may take a while before you run out of space. So I’ve developed a question that helps me identify things I should let go of even if…
Read more →When I’m helping clients who are overwhelmed with books, we inevitably come across a collection of travel books on their shelves. In the days before you could easily find information about faraway places via the internet, we relied on glossy, fact-filled books by companies like Fodor’s, Frommer’s, and Baedeker. These books not only had listings of sights to see, they also had recommendations of hotels and restaurants. Many of my clients are reluctant to part with these books, even though…
Read more →When I was a child, my mother owned just a few books that she had amassed during her girlhood and early adulthood. Having grown up during the Depression, neither she nor my father owned a lot of books despite being voracious readers. The public library was a godsend for them growing up, and that habit continued through their adult years. From her college years, there was her textbook from her class on the Romantic poets as well as the complete…
Read more →For the past three years, I’ve kept track of how many books I read each year. The first year I did that (2020) happened to be the pandemic shutdown year. I read 82 books that year, not surprisingly since there wasn’t much else to do. In 2021, I outdid myself by reading 91 books. Then in 2022, I read 92 books. This was a shock to me, as I went into 2022 knowing that my schedule was going to be…
Read more →In one of my earlier posts about how I’m spending my stay-at-home time (see Making Lemonade), I mentioned that I was planning to tackle the unread books on my bookshelves, after more than seven years as the satisfied owner of an e-reader. Books mainly make their way into my home when my clients are disposing of them and I ask if I can have them. Usually it’s a book that I have been wanting to read or that I have been curious about….
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