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WASHINGTON—Every disorganized
person needs a scapegoat, and on Week Four of my crusade
to clear our hopelessly overstuffed attic, I chose my
husband, Bob.
Having already sorted through
holiday decorations, I turned to books, smug in the
belief that Bob was responsible for the boxes up there
filled with volumes going back to college. I love books,
but I don’t insist on a lifelong relationship with every
one of them. Nearly three years ago, for example, our
local middle school organized a used-book sale and I
donated more than 200 of my own books to the cause (Bob
mysteriously went missing during this exercise). So as
the piles of clutter spread like ivy across our attic
floor these past few years, I convinced myself that if
only Bob would thin out his books, the room would be
usable, or at least accessible.
On the issue of books I got
surprisingly little help from Caitlin Shear, the
professional organizer who has signed on to be my coach
and hand-holder during this process. Each week she has
led me through the sorting, scrapping and separation
anxiety of dealing with clutter. But when it comes to
books, fiction and nonfiction, she is unabashedly a
keeper.
“I am a big books person,” she
admits. “I tend to get rid of everything else before I
will let go of a book.” She has even allowed her
husband, Mike, to keep his collection of science-fiction
paperbacks from the early 1980s. “I am,” she says, “a
total bibliophile.”
So am I. My father was a book
editor early in his journalism career, so the New York
apartment where I grew up was lined with books. They
were the only things my parents allowed themselves to
collect, and somehow they made room for 1,100 volumes on
shelves in three of our four smallish rooms. They added
warmth and color to our white-wall rental.
Trying to get rid of those books
after both my parents died was a nightmare.
The local branches of the New York
Public Library would not take them. A few nonprofits
would have accepted them, but transporting 1,100 books
across the city to the drop-off sites—in a small car,
with a baby—while the landlord pressed us to empty the
apartment proved too daunting.
We were faced with the depressing
prospect of consigning them and the memories they held
to the incinerator shaft until a friend recommended
Housing Works Used Book Café in SoHo, where all profits
go to services to help homeless people living with HIV
and AIDS. They would pick up the books as long as we
could pack them up. Bob heroically pulled an all-nighter
while baby and I slept until the truck arrived to pick
them up the next morning.
Ever since then, I have been
skittish about the size of our book collection, which
peaked at about 600 when we moved into our house in the
District seven years ago. So for this week’s exercise in
space clearing, I insisted that Bob join Caitlin and me
in the attic to make tough choices. We worked
independently for nearly two hours; we agreed that he
would not make decisions about any of my books and I
would have no say about his. As I piled up my paperback
novels to donate, I could hear him muttering things
like: “I bought that. I’ve never read it. Stupid me.”
In the end, we donated 25 hardcover
and 42 paperback books to a local library branch. More
than half of those were contributions from Bob,
including Joe Lieberman’s autobiography; nearly a dozen
books on the general theme of urban sprawl, including my
personal favorite: a book-length federal document from
the early 1980s known as the Urban Development Annual
Report; and assorted other nonfiction tomes. We’re down
to about 200 books, neatly piled in 10 boxes lined up
against the wall. For these, we plan to get proper
shelves in the living room.
Caitlin says that for many
people—including herself—books are among the most
difficult things to part with. But she has two tips for
anyone trying to get a handle on an overgrown
collection: First, check the condition of the book.
“Are the pages so brittle and
yellow that you’re never going to read them?” If so, she
says, donate. And second, “be realistic about the format
you like to read them in.” Most people never reread
paperbacks they’ve kept for a while, especially the
smaller ones, she says.
Next week: What to Do About
Infant Equipment? Take Baby Steps |
