Simple Living Lesson #8 - Libraries

Hello everyone! Thanks for coming over for a read! Last year I started a journey toward minimalism. I call my version minimalish. I found a great ebook called Simple Living: Thirty Days to Less Stuff and More Life. For those of you clicking by for the first time, I’ve been working through the lessons one week at a time. So far I have dreamed, looked underneath, tried (and failed) at finding quiet, cleared off surfaces, managed my incoming  and outgoing life and just last week examined how I spend my time.

This week’s lesson is called Libraries. The task for this week is to go through my books and dvds and ask myself if I have ever read or watched them, and if I ever will again. Uh-oh. I might have some trouble with this one. I have been pretty good about decluttering the books that I once hoarded. I managed to donate four big boxes of books when I did the first big cleanout for my Scrapbook Room challenge. I don’t have a huge collection of books anymore, but the DVDs are another story altogether.

My husband is a great guy. He is surrounded by girls and frilly pink things in our house. He doesn’t have a man cave anymore, as it has been turned into the dollhouse/dressup clothes room. He doesn’t have a space for guy stuff but… he has a collection. A massive DVD collection, that takes up an entire wall in our craft closet/room. I have begged asked him to pare down the collection to a more manageable selection, but much in the way my girls think their stuffies have feelings, my husband has strong feelings about his DVD collection.

Since we have managed to contain his rather large collection (over 400 dvds!!) to one wall in one room, I guess I can’t really complain about the space they take up. So, I better find another area to lessen my library! Off to the magazine rack, with the stack of parenting, organizing and cooking magazines that I still have not read.

While gathering my stack of unread magazines I tried to think of a way to repurpose them instead of just chucking them into the recycling bin. Then I had an A-Ha! Moment! I have a few pairs of boots falling all over themselves in the garage. I grabbed some elastic bands, rolled my magazines into handy-dandy boot stander uppers!

What do you collect? Do you have a library you could pare down? Next week’s Simple Living Lesson is entitled Money… I fear another tough challenge is coming!!