Decluttering Books: Why It’s So Hard (and How to Do It Anyway)

What is the low-key hardest category to declutter? It’s books, folks! Decluttering books doesn’t seem hard but most of us are pretty attached to our book collections. Books carry meaning in a way that many other possessions do not. In midlife, the books we’ve accumulated over time can represent the many phases of our lives. Ideas, interests, characters – they all stay with us. That’s why so many of us hold onto books that:

• We read many, many moons ago
• We never finished
• We still hope to read someday
• We will never read, but someone we love gifted to us

Over time, our shelves quietly fill up…and overflow with books that no longer serve us. As someone in midlife who loves to read (40+ every year!) and makes her living professionally organizing – I’m here to tell you that decluttering your book collection is worth your time. I’m not recommending a full purge, just a curation. It will take place in 3 rounds – and if your book collection is large and overwhelming you can go one round at a time.

Round 1: The For Sure Keeps

When you have so many of something the thought of pulling each one out and assessing its worth is overwhelming. The easiest way to declutter books is to move quickly. So for Decluttering Books Round 1 we are going to use the technique of inside-out decluttering to help speed things up. Inside Out Decluttering simply means that instead of assessing each and every book in your collection, you’re going to do a quick visual scan and pull out the books you for sure want to keep. How do you decide which ones make the cut? Here are 2 filters I use for my scan.

The Classics

By classics I mean your classics, the books that are the most meaningful to you. You’ve likely read them multiple times and maybe your copy is a bit beat up but never will they be absent from a collection of yours.

I have more than a few books that fall into this category, including my entire collection of Jane Austen, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, and Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. I still reread these classics from time to time, and even though that now happens on a device – the actual physical books are like old friends I like to see on the daily. They are that important – the top tier if you will.

The Reference Books

These are books you like to reference on a regular basis. They are likely non-fiction and have impacted your life in a meaningful way. For me, books like Atomic Habits by James Clear, Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown, Being Mortal by Atul Gawande and The Comfort Book by Matt Haig are all books I reference often in my work and life. I am pulling them off the shelf often, not to re-read the whole thing but to reference something specific.

Round 2: The Easy Edits

Decluttering Books Round 2 is a similar exercise to Round 1, but with an opposite intention. We are going to do another quick visual scan, but this time we are looking for easy edits. With easy edits, you’re looking for the books you can let go with little to no mental effort.

Here are filters I use for easy edits.

The Obsolete How-To Books

Doesn’t everyone go to YouTube or another video platform to learn how to do something? I’m wondering how the genre of ‘Dummies’ books is currently performing now that all of the knowledge-base is accessed so easily online. I had many in this category as well as Sunset Gardening reference books and finance books. They were easy to identify on my shelves and I wasn’t really attached to any of them.

The Gifted Books You Will Never Read

My friends and family love to gift books. Every year at my birthday in June and Christmas I receive a new batch of reads. Most of them I do end up reading but there are always a few I know I will never get to (or I’ve already read!) Last year my brother gifted me Fast Like  Girl because he knew I was trying intermittent fasting. Such a sweet sentiment but I was already far down the fasting road and already had my fasting bible (The Galveston Diet by Dr. Mary Claire Haver.)  As I was scanning my shelves a few months later for edits I recognized I was never going to read Fast Like a Girl and so it went into my donation box.

Two more popular categories of gifted books are coffee-table books and cookbooks. Take a visual spin through your collections of both and I’ll bet you find some easy edits!

The Books You Never Finished

It is a rare occasion that I do not finish a book I started. But every year there are a couple. If I didn’t like it enough to finish it, it isn’t hard to let it go. If you have been hanging on to books that you intended to finish but didn’t – maybe practice some radical honesty and cut the cord!

Round 3: Everything In Between

What you’re left with after the lightning rounds 1 and 2 is all the stuff in-between. There’s probably still a lot but it feels more manageable since you removed the easy keeps and edits. Decluttering Books Round 3 is going to take a bit more time. If you are still feeling overwhelmed, take it in smaller chunks.

For the books that are left, ask yourself the following questions:

• What is my reason for keeping this book? (‘Because I’ve had it forever’ is not a reason, FYI)
• Would I buy this book again today?
• Am I realistically going to read this in the next year?
• Do I truly love having this book on my shelf?

Remember that books are one of the easiest items to replace if you change your mind. Libraries, digital books, and used bookstores make access easier than ever so it’s not a huge risk to take if you’re in doubt!

Curating is Honoring

Curating your book collection is an act of honoring your reading life. Your book shelves should feel curated, not crowded. It is the books that make up your book collection (rather than the size of the collection itself) that says something about you. When every book on the shelf is one you love, plan to read, or return to often, the entire collection feels different. More meaningful and special.