A shelf on my bookshelf

Bookshelves and Sentimentality

My efforts to remove

The final frontier. What do you think about when I say that? Most of you will probably say space, or Alaska, or maybe even the oceans. If you ask me, I think about my bookshelf.

I’ve been going through the process of minimizing my things for about a year now. At this point I’ve managed to get my number of possessions pretty low, although I still have one untouched area, my bookshelf. Over the course of this past year I’ve been getting rid of clothing, furniture, unneeded papers from middle school, backpacks, little bits and pieces of things I’ve forgotten but clung to just in case. Little by little I’ve minimized my possessions, and I feel great. I’m more organized, my grades are better, I never have to clean, save for a little vacuuming here and there. Minimalism has made my life more enjoyable.

But still there lurks a final foe. My bookshelf, a vault of nostalgia. I haven’t been able to break into its shelves and get rid of a single book, until a few days ago. As of yesterday I have finally removed the last unwanted book. The process was arduous, of course, and I cannot say I didn’t stop to sit and reminisce about a particular volume before tossing it into a pile of books destined for a second hand shop. As I went, slowly cleaning the shelves, I realized something: The ultimate enemy of the minimalist is the side of sentimentality that exists within us all. Sentimentality holds us back while we do our Spring cleaning, it tells us to keep the pile of magazines — there could be something to clip in there and our dream board is seemingly skimpy; The New Yorker from 2008 has to stay. Minimalist thought puts a hand on our shoulder and tells us that we’re never going to look at that magazine again. It’s time to recycle it.

This is not to say that minimalism demands we go forth into our homes and throw away anything unneeded with a cold heart. Minimalism says to stop and think before we keep something, think whether this adds value to life, or is this dusty magazine with outdated comics and a torn binding going to sit in a pile with more disused items until our homes contain ceiling-scrapers of decrepit periodicals?

This brings us back to my bookshelf, which now sits with much less weight on its shelves. Every book is something I would read and do read in cycles. I even instituted a rule to keep my net accumulation of books at zero. For every book I bring home, one must leave my shelf. The only remaining step, should I choose to follow it, is digitization, though I still prefer the feel of paper and ink to glass.