In the last months of 2022, I had, for various reasons, occasions to move a lot of my books around. I could get into the whys and the wherefores, the reasons and the inciting incidents, but the important thing is this: I highly recommend this process.
Put your hands on your books. All of them. Are you sure you know what’s in there?
The reason for moving all the fiction was simple: The bookshelves overflowed and needed to be expanded. I looked forward to this process for the weeks it took for more shelving to arrive. I would sit with my morning coffee and think, I get to rearrange you soon at the shelves.
With a little more room up top, I moved everything up, trying to leave just a little space at the end of each shelf for the books I knew would be added before too long (and a lot of room in the Ws, because Chuck Wendig’s big chonky Wayward is in my TBR pile). I dusted and tidied and only found one dead spider along with all the cat fur. Now, everything is lined up neatly; everything belongs where it is. And I want it all to be there. There wasn’t anything about which I thought, Well, this can go in the discard pile. It was a deeply satisfying feeling.
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