Although over the years I’ve had stuff stolen from my home, here I’m not addressing thieves but rather how I’ve recently happily found people (friends, visitors, and nonprofits) who help me prune my stuff. It all started when our son who lives in Singapore came home for a 3-week visit. This meant that most of […]
Living Lightly
Susan Vogt on living more simply but abundantlyBrowsing Posts tagged Books
I’ve got a big plan for Lent this year which will come in a couple weeks so I’m just catching up on smaller things that came my way recently. Keep your eyes open for opportunities Some give aways come by chance. We hired someone to do some electrical work at our house and the worker […]
Our daughter was home for Mother’s Day. Yay! Now that she lives back in the States, I encourage her to take her stuff that’s been stored at our home to her home – a much delayed goal. In the process Heidi identified 6 books that she said were obsolete and should be pitched. The Best […]
Now that one office file cabinet is pretty much pruned and reorganized, I decided to tackle my two bookcases which hold work related books. I had a happy conundrum. Friends who were moving out of town offered me one of their bookcases. It matched my main bookcase in size and style so I was happy […]
Lately, I’ve been having some troubling feelings connected with my latest book, Blessed By Less: Clearing Your Life of Clutter by Living Lightly. It was published almost 3 years ago and won a number of awards. I’m understandably proud of it, but I find myself feeling dispirited by not getting enough credit for it. For […]
As our 44 year marriage evolved, we realized that my husband, Jim, enjoyed cooking and I didn’t. This fits us well in sort of a “Jack Sprat could eat no fat; his wife could eat no lean” way. As our marriage progressed so did our accumulation of cookbooks. I dared not complain because, after all, I […]
Can you ever have too many inspirational books? Yes! Recently I was very proud of myself book-wise. I found 3 fine inspirational books from which I had consumed enough relevant inspiration that I was willing to part with them. I felt even better about finding a good home for them – a local coffee shop […]
This is the last week I’m going to devote to books and we have eight more bookcases in our house. It’s not as bad as it sounds though since 2 hold my professional books, 2 are for Jim’s work, and 4 are our kid’s bookcases. In the interest of family harmony, I’m not going to […]
It’s book week #3 and I’m now evaluating the bookcases in the dining room. Technically this room has three bookcases but two of them are actually display shelves with stuff we’ve collected from various countries. One bookcase has books related to the continent of Asia, the second has books on Africa. Most of these are […]
Today I took on our biggest bookcase of 439 books. (One whole shelf contained sort of sorted Legos. I wouldn’t dare give those away.) I chose 193 books to give away which are pictured at right. Probably it’s more instructive to discuss what I decided to keep. A few old college text books: I thought […]
I’ve procrastinated long enough. It’s now time to tackle the books in our house. I counted 11 bookcases (not counting the 2 in Jim’s office and 3 that primarily have artifacts on them, not books) and 1,339 books at last count. Surely I can find quite a few to give away although it may be […]
Normally I might feel a little guilty about leaving good literature in doorways, but it’s campaign season and actually this is one thing I feel virtuous about. It’s not that I enjoy walking around all afternoon trying to find addresses and knocking on strangers’ doors, but I feel it is my duty. I have no […]
I’ve been avoiding books till I summon up the courage to make some hard decisions. The Encyclopedia Britannica set was an exception. Not only was it published in 1961 but it was missing the “C” volume – probably used as a booster seat years ago. Who uses hard copies of encyclopedia anymore? I called the […]
We had 1,339 books in our house in the year 2000. I know this because our youngest child counted them. It was partly my attempt to give him a simple chore each day during summer vacation and partly curiosity. I’m sure it’s over 1,500 by now because we keep adding and seldom subtracting books. I […]
