video: decluttering books – my view on the Konmari debacle

If you’ve been following the recent debate, you’ll know that Marie Kondo has sparked some feelings regarding books… I wanted to jump in and share my thoughts on the debacle.

Spoiler alert: I’m on the “it’s okay to get rid of books” camp.

Author: emilia grace

romance writer and bibliophile

One thought on “video: decluttering books – my view on the Konmari debacle”

  1. I fall somewhere in between Marie Kondo’s recommendation of max-30 books and what many book bloggers consider a reasonable number of books. I’ve never been a big collector and I tend to purge stuff on a regular basis. Back in 2010, my TBR shelf was up to about 400 books, though thankfully 75% of that was virtual TBR and not stuff I actually owned or paid for. It was just way too much and I went through a ruthless culling period in the first few months of 2011, until I got my TBR down to zero. Now, I don’t let my virtual TBR get above 20 (excluding later books in series that haven’t been released yet) and I literally have one book on my shelf that’s unread. (Well, there are others, but they’re Jason’s and I have no desire to read them.) I’m not sure how many books I own – maybe 150? 100? – but I know that I too-ruthlessly culled the books when I did KonMari a few years ago. Instead of asking myself if the books sparked joy, I asked if I could easily get them from the library. I ended up getting rid of maybe 20 that I would have preferred to keep, but the other 200ish were fine. Now, most of my books are long-time precious on a personal level, and those that aren’t get culled when I’m eventually done with them. But I don’t buy books I haven’t read except in VERY specific circumstances (I believe I’ve done it once in the last three years and it was with a sequel from a favorite author that I’d highly anticipated for two years). Books come from the library first, or Audible (where I can return if I dislike). Anyway, just blathering. I agree with you on a lot of these points.

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