Day 25 Purging Tips – Books

Sharing is caring!

Today is Day 25 of the 31 Days of 10-minute Purging Tips Challenge.  Today we’ll be going through that bookshelf or pile of books you have. Let’s see what we want to keep and what needs to be purged. Our goal is to clear the clutter and eliminate things we don’t need from our lives and home so that we can better enjoy life. 

I have a confession. I love books. Books are the only thing I don’t think you can have too many of. But that’s not what an organizer is supposed to say.  So this is my purging challenge. Books. For some people the challenge is shoes, for some it’s family momentos, but for me it’s books. I can acknowledge that it is possible to have too many books, but my then my heart says it’s not. Today we’ll go through our books together and look for ones that we don’t need. We’ll support each other through today’s purging task.  

Clearing Clutter – Purging Tips for Books

Grab the 6 purging bags you created earlier, print your free Purging Clutter Checklist and head to your bookshelf. 

Take Everything Out-Remember that we’re doing this in 10 minutes, so only take out as much as you can go through in that time, so that means you may just tackle one shelf to stay in your 10 minuted time-frame. Place the books on the floor or on a table. You can come back to the other books another time you have 10 minutes.

Group Like Items Together – Quickly group similar books together. Place reference books together. Place fiction books together. Place keepsakes together. 

Evaluate – Look at each group you’ve created. This is the tough part (for me). Be brutally honest. Look at each group and ask yourself if you really need the group of books. If the answer is yes, then consider each book in the group and decide if you really need each of the books.Is the information in the book readily available online?  If the answer is you don’t need the book, then ask if you love it. When was the last time you read it? Will you realistically read it again? Could you check it out from the library the next time you would want to read it? Do you have books that you borrowed and need to return? If you’re having a difficult time with this purging task, breaking it into 10 minute chunks will help, but don’t give up. Look at every single book and ask yourself if you need it or love it. If the answer is no, then it needs to go. 

Purge – Remove items you don’t need to keep and place them in one of your 6 purging bags.  Before you throw books in the recycle bag, stop and consider if they can be donated. Your local school, library,  senior center, hospital and disabled care center may appreciate donations. Even if the book is damaged, it may be able to be used for crafting, so ask before you simply throw books away.  If you have rare or valuable books that you want to sell, commit to researching and getting it listed within a month’s time. 

Put Everything Away – Put the books you’ve decided to keep back away. Books deserve to be stored on shelves not in piles on the floor. Purchase or build shelves for the books you love enough to keep. If you still have piles of books that won’t fit on your shelves, you need to go back through and purge more because you may still have too many books. 

You may find these book purging tips from The Seana Method helpful.

You can use upcycled book pages to craft a wreath. 

You can craft recycled books for Halloween or for Harry Potter fans.

You can make your own magazine holder for free to organize books and pamphlets. 

Another day is done. We’ve completed Day 25. Can you believe it?! Join me tomorrow for Day 26 in the 31 Days of 10-Minute Purging Tips challenge. Let’s purge more to make more room so you can enjoy life more.

Find all my decluttering tips, printables and challenges in the table below. You can scroll though the table and look for ideas or search for specific ideas with the magnifying glass in the upper right-hand corner (on desktop). Click on the topic and then click through the specific article.