Books are not clutter. Declutter something else.
This is what I think of decluttering my bookshelves.
Thank you, Drogon.
What’s your self-help guide, Fahrenheit 451?
Crammed bookshelves are a good thing. Empty bookshelves = empty minds. Books I can live without, I stuff in a box and give away. Books that I love, I live with. There are a lot of them.
So we have come to this. Throughout history, people have become rich by selling us things. Now people get rich by telling us to get rid of things. (Clearing space that inevitably requires buying more things.) Clever.
Do not throw your books away in order to gain a temporary sense that your life is within your control. It never is. Give your unloved books to other readers, donate them to libraries, send them to the children in warzones who think bombs and rubble are all they can expect of life.
When my backlog (tsundoku) is too big, I refrain from buying more books until the pile of unread books is reduced. When I admit to myself that I will never read a book I own, I give it away.
Books do not exist to spark joy (I’m looking at you, Dostoevsky), though the good ones do, no matter how dire their subjects.
Books made me. Books have saved my life many times. You can argue that the words make the book, not the pages between the covers, but the design, the texture, the smell of the book is essential to my reading experience. It engraves the book in my memory. Screens surround us, and people have such short memories now. I don’t.
I have hundreds of e-books, which I resort to when the paper versions are not available. I haven’t finished a single one.
Life is chaos. It is not made neater or more comprehensible by keeping the inconvenient parts of it out of sight.
Consider that decluttering is a metaphor you take too literally.
You say Clutter, I say Begone, philistine.
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