Step one was gather together all my books into one place. Step two is stack them into categories - interesting to find that most of my books are reference books of one kind or another....

So far my categories are -

Gardening
Art
Travel
Natural History
Novels
Biographies
Childrens
Motivational
Diet and Health
Current Reference (living simply)
Standard Reference
Duplicates (how many dictionaries does one family need?)
Picture Books
To Be Returned
Definitely to Get Rid Of
and (inevitably) Miscellaneous

I like Lynne's idea of a 'core library' (see comments 28 Nov). I now see myself as pruning and thinning and getting rid of dead wood to keep my core library vital, healthy and accessible and with room for fresh growth. (Do you like my gardening metaphors Lynne?)

Well, Peter Walsh in his book It's All Too Much (yes, I've sent for it - don't laugh!) says you keep all those books so that when you reread them you will remember the great times you had at university, or because you might need them someday, or you have always had them so you can't part with them, or someone gave them to you so you are obliged to keep them forever........

I simply love them! They represent many hours of enjoyment, which is lovely, but do they give me joy now? Just being there? Maybe not.

Someone else once said your books should represent who you are now, not who you were 10 or 20 or more years ago. Good point. I've absorbed much of what I needed from my books I think. This is something I'll consider as I go through them deciding whether or not to keep them.

This weather is perfect for the task. Feed the birds, then a good fire and a mug of coffee and I shall set to, but first....

Here  are some of the suggestions which struck a chord with me....

Someone said 'Think about what kind of library you want'. Well apart from one where I can walk up to a shelf, lay hands on the book I want straight away, and lift it off the shelf without having to move something else first (this is my number one requirement!) I haven't thought about it really.

One of the decisions I have made however is that I'm not buying any more bookshelves.

Someone else had an 'unread' category. I don't have an unread category! I've read all my books. I read them almost as soon as they come in the door - then they go on the bookshelf.

Which raises the question - If I've read them all what am I keeping them for?

The bookshelves are full (some books are stacked two deep) and there are now eleven piles of books stacked on the rug. At a guess 100 or so books. For which there is no shelf space.

(This is easily going to take a full week.)

Where to start?

I have to start with my emotional attachment to my books. The otherwise helpful Organise Now! makes no mention of this. After 'Gather all your books from all over the house' the author blithely says 'Sort into three piles. Throw. Sell or donate. Keep.' But this is where I need help! How do I choose?  

So back to the internet - which is what has changed the world of books forever - and I found a site with suggestions and comments from book lovers doing this very task -

www.ask.metafilter.com/32451/advice-for-clearing-literary-clutter

I wonder if using bold is not the done thing either..and is it worse than using too many exclamation marks? I do know not to use capitals because that would be SHOUTING, and I wouldn't shout at you....ever.

Books. I am going to be bold about tackling my problem, a not uncommon one, of too many books.

I love books. Always have and always will. But the world has changed. And my house is not getting any bigger. My family is.

Each year we put the Christmas tree in the study and all the visiting children gather to decorate it. There are five extra children this year in my family! And at the moment you can hardly move in there for stacks of books.

So, step one in my helpful book (see yesterday's post) is - gather all your books from around the house and your vehicle.

I may be gone some time....

The idea of organising - thoughts, time, work, space and stuff, underpins this blog really. And I do like organising and being organised. I guess there's a sense of being in control of your life, and of forward momentum that is satisfying about it. Things functioning smoothly, finding things when you need them, all lead to a simpler, more relaxed life.

I've just bought Organise Now! - a weekly guide to simplify your space and your life by Jennifer Ford Berry. It covers 52 weeks!

I'm hoping the book will help me get to the parts I wouldn't otherwise reach...the attic?

But first, the books....

'My kind of cooking!' I thought when I saw the title of this cookbook.

Do you find that you are snacking in the evenings after dinner these dark nights? (Except for Lynne and Claire who are in sunny New Zealand and Australia of course...picnics, barbies, wine tastings...) But I notice that if I eat lunch I'm much less inclined to do this. So I've compiled a list of 7 of these lunches which only have 5 ingredients and take 10 minutes to make - I can manage this much cooking! Warm butter beans with rosemary and garlic, chickpea and parmesan dip, shaved courgettes and mint - I like this kind of food with crunchy oatcakes or warm pitta bread. Plan to try it for a week - have my shopping list ready - bon appetit.

Jules Clancy's e book is free to download - click here: http://thestonesoup.com/blog/2010/06a-free-e-cookbook/

Bruno Bettelheim's studies of kibbutz raised children led him to believe that the lack of private possessions had a negative effect on the ability to make personal relationships.

Sherry Turkle in Evocative Objects:Things We Like talks of  'objects as companions to our emotional lives' and 'objects that connect us to ideas and people'. Which reminds me how interesting it was to do Janet Luhr's exercise (see 14 Nov). Have you tried that? How useful did you find it?  I wonder if it would help with decisions about which books to keep?

I find there is nothing simple about getting rid of books.....

I've been looking at materialism through the eyes of the anthropologists in books like The Comfort of Things and Stuff by Daniel Miller, as a kind of counterbalance to all this minimalism and the notion that tends to go with it that we are less than good if we own, and value 'things'. Daniel Miller puts it thus:

'....we will not be helped by either a theory of stuff, or an attitude to stuff, that simply tries to oppose ourselves to it; as though the more we think of things as alien, the more we keep ourselves sacrosanct and pure. The idea that stuff somehow drains away our humanity.

This model of the noble, unmaterialistic savage is entirely unhelpful. All it achieves is the assumption of lost purity. It makes us feel alienated and polluted simply for being who we are.'

Judging theories on the basis of whether or not they are 'helpful' raises a whole lot more questions, but there is certainly food for thought here.

I like the idea of 365 less things www.365lessthings.com (though I don't necessarily want to read about and see a photograph of every item that was being disposed of). The author decided to get rid of one thing a day for a year.

I like these ideas - a painting a day, a haiku a week, a novel in a month etc. I think it's because they focus the mind so forcefully. Instead of 'One day maybe I'll....whatever' an approach like this makes it seem do-able. After all everyone can get rid of one thing a day, whereas if I decided to blitz the whole house I'd be so overwhelmed at the size of the task I'd be more inclined to not even make a start.

I remembered my Throw Ten Things period (see 11th May). It was very effective. Maybe I'll try it for the rest of November, before the influx of stuff that happens in December.

Am reading The Comfort of Things as a counterbalance.....

Since deciding to write a novel in February 2011 (see 1 Nov) I've been looking at some of the thousands of books on How To Write A Novel.

It's having the effect of making me all self conscious about my writing, and particularly about my use, or over use, of exclamation marks! (oops).

Apparently it is sinful! (sorry) and in very bad taste to use too many exclamation marks.


Somerset Maugham said, 'There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.'

After yesterdays 4,246 ways to make Christmas more  fun, I found another laugh, in the pages of The Times.

'From Coal Pit to Royal Palace: the Middleton's Astonishing Journey' contained this sentence -

'That a future queen might emerge from the grubby, insanitary, two-up, two-down house and lineage of a coal miner would surely have provoked incredulity.'

What provokes incredulity is that they would go back to Kate's great great grandfather to get such a grubbily sensational line....! You have to laugh, and hope the dear girl doesn't read The Times.

Oh, the parallel world of the media is a laugh a minute these jolly days!

Or do I have a warped sense of humour....

Here are some of the things that made me laugh at a  magazine stand today...

Capture The Joy - 1500 Magical Christmas Ideas!  (House Beautiful)

973 Fresh Ideas To Help You Celebrate Christmas!  (Ideal Home)

668 Great Ways To Celebrate!  (Good Housekeeping)

Over 180 Ideas And Recipes For The Festive Season!  (Good Housekeeping)

102 Christmas Recipes You'll Love To Make!  (YUM)

823 Gorgeous Christmas Buys For You!  (Cosmopolitan)


more on keeping Christmas simple to come...maybe nearer Christmas....

Have you heard about the young people who own little except a laptop an IPhone and a credit card? And maybe a few shirts, two pairs of trousers and some shoes?

An extreme reaction against consumerism in some cases, in others a wish to travel light and work from anywhere in the world, and move home at short notice. A truly alternative lifestyle for the 21C - though I doubt I'd have as much faith in the technology. Or be willing to put myself at the mercy of Microsoft and Google.

But how brave to try!

Blogger Sam Hughes says -

     A minimalist lifestyle does not make you a better person. But it may make you happier.

Google 'blogs on minimalism' for more. My favourite is www.mnmlist.com  Nice Title?

Browsing www.kiva.org I came across the request of a woman called Claudia in Bolivia for a loan to improve her home and buy a front door. Claudia is a mother, she earns her living, and she can afford to repay the loan. Given that I have just said in a recent post that my own front door key is my favourite possession how could I not respond by lending the $275 she needs! Through Kiva I can do this.

See Bill Clinton describing the organisation by googling You Tube Bill Clinton Kiva. He mentions one of my heroes Muhammad Yunus. Another inspiration is www.thegirleffect.org .

There is a lot of wonderful work going on out there!

The nicer part of yesterday's exercise of looking around my things and noting the feelings they brought up, were the memories: of choosing that painting at a private view in Harrogate, of where we were when we found that decoy duck - so elegant (it was The Jam Factory Oxford), of how pleased we were at buying the sofa. How fortunate we felt that that piece of furniture has fitted in in all our different houses. How we smiled, and still smile at 6 year old Laura calling the chest of drawers 'the chester drawers (we're not in the habit of giving our furniture names, but this is called 'Chester'.

So here is a photo of that duck on Chester.....

A suggestion from Janet Luhrs in her book The Simple Living Guide is to just sit down and look around your room and ask yourself how each item in it makes you feel, one by one. I could do this best by writing my racing thoughts down - it makes me go more slowly and think more clearly (which is why I'm writing this blog!)

I was surprised at how many negative thoughts came up.
 
The lamps - I had wanted white ones but black ones were cheaper (how does this make me feel? Silly. I could have bought the ones I really wanted.) I try to keep things simple but the shelf had accumulated lots of things in too many colours. (Feeling? Slightly irritable - simple and uncluttered makes me feel calmer.)
The hearth needs a tile fixing (lazy). I'd always intended to paint the chairs white but I've never got around to it (lazy again). I've been meaning to get the lovely 40 year old sofa recovered.....and so on.

I do believe each of these kinds of thoughts can drag you down a tiny little bit - and I'm thinking them every time I look at them - the broken hearth tile for example. Every time I see it I'm telling myself I'm lazy, and I see it almost every time I look at the hearth. Not good, is it.

The thing is it's easier, quicker, and I have to say more fun, to go out and buy something new for the room (I've just bought a new cosy rug,) than to do the boring fixing and repairing jobs like filling the gaps in the floorboards, which would, in the longer term, make more of a difference to my satisfaction with the room. There's nothing major here. I can (and do) live with all these things, and I'm very grateful to have them at all, however imperfect.

So this winter's work might be to do those nagging tasks, some of which I've been looking at for years. I'm not a very patient person, but am beginning to see how simple and satisfying it might be to just knuckle down and do these things!
 
Will report back....or better still can I ask you to ask me in a month or two whether I've done anything about them?

Thinking about more things which make me feel good about my home (I've often said my favourite possession is my own front door key) I come back to a book called Sensual Home by Ilse Crawford.

She says that home should be a place that engages all our senses fully.

I was reading it recently in the late evening with the first snow of winter on the mountains, luxuriating in the sound of the fire crackling, the warmth of a throw on the sofa, and the comfort of cushions, the smell of a special candle and the soft light from a lamp. I also savoured the silence. Warmth, peace, luxury and privacy. It's good to stop and appreciate how fortunate I am.

What are the things about your home which make you feel good?

I've written quite a bit about light in my home - that's because light rooms make me feel good, and I wondered what else makes me feel good about my home.

Having friends and family in it makes me feel good.
 
Inspired by the new cookbook 'Long Nights and Log Fires - Warming Comfort Food for Family and Friends' we had a long relaxed and companionable lunch last Saturday with very comforting food and leisurely conversation. Log fire and a few candles, wine and good coffee. Such a pleasure. I will do this more often this winter.

(We ate Janssen's Temptation - a bit like potato dauphinois but with anchovies, Jamie's Tuscan bread salad, and home made raspberry ice cream.....yummy)

Hold everything. The long awaited book No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty arrived today (see posting 1st Nov).

It's a rainy, blustery, dull November day - the wind is gusting at 58mph so I'm not going to be going anywhere - perfect for a feet-up-on-the-sofa afternoon read. Our mail doesn't arrive till about 1.30 pm. By then I'd done the essentials, attended a meeting, and battened down the greenhouse, so I'd no qualms about throwing some more logs on the fire, washing a bunch of grapes, making a pot of tea and having a good read - and a good laugh as it turns out. By page 45 I had laughed more than I'd laughed all week!

I love this book. I recommend you read it even if you're not planning to write a novel in a month.

The whole idea is so preposterous, and Baty's attitude so cavalier and his sense of humour so engaging, that it makes for a fun read. The fact that National Novel Writing Month's success is so surprising given the daftness of the idea delights me too....

It's been a marvellous year for fungi. I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw this one - encrusted with magnificent diamonds - simply beautiful...

Darker nights since the clocks went back focus attention again on home. I had a browse in the big department stores in the city and was surprised at how much glitz and bling is around. Isn't this a recession? Aren't we supposed to be in an age of austerity?

Treat the world of commerce as one big museum, I read somewhere. I love to look, but since getting into the habit of asking myself 'Will my life be simpler if I buy this?' I buy less.......there is always the question though - thousands of people - we all know some of them - earn an honest living designing, making, packing, advertising, transporting and selling all this stuff, some of which is made with skill and care. It's simplistic to think that just consuming less is the answer....

Penny for your thoughts?

'To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion, to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich, to listen to stars and birds, babies and sages, with open heart; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common - this is my symphony.'

                                 William Henry Channing  1810 - 1884

As the children got older The Onceover (see 26 Oct) became a shared task, at least on weekends and in the holidays. The secret to getting them to help I found, was in letting them choose . I've actually seen them race downstairs to see who could get to the list first! It was understood they had no choice about actually helping - they had  chores to do before they went out with their friends, but they could choose which ones, from the list I made the night before. Six items - three small tasks each - a tick box beside each one. First down got to choose.

Another strategy was to see of we could beat the buzzer - as in 'Let's see if we can tidy this whole room in 8 minutes, then we'll have a drink/snack/walk'. It worked most of the time, and carrots are better than sticks, don't you think?

Meeting up with a friend recently reminded me of another strategy that worked well for us when our children were small and life a bit hectic. I'd phone my friend and say 'The house is a mess - can you come and visit?' And she'd say 'Right it's 10 o'clock, we'll be there at 2.00. You've got three hours.' And we'd all whizz through the house, cleaning and tidying and cooking and laughing a lot if I remember rightly. 'Yes, and if I remember rightly we did it to the sound of The Flight of The Bumble Bee!' my daughter said.

I still put music on to get me going. The current favourite is Signs of Life by The Penguin Cafe Orchestra (thanks Lynne).

It can be fun......