I had it in my head that I would do weekly updates every Friday and that this would be a pleasant little way to let go of some books I’ve been holding onto over the summer months. Welp, This is the first update in a month so that idea clearly didn’t work out like I was hoping it would.

This update isn’t even going to be about books. Wild, right? I went to see Beth (she lives on the other side of the country and, if you didn’t know, the USA is a very wide, very big country. We’re no Australia, but we’re also no Lichtenstein.) We had a lovely trip. I’m actually going to do a haul post next week because we visited two independent book stores on my visit and I picked up some books that will probably be jumping the queue because I’m pretty excited about them. Then, I got covid for the first time and I was actively sick for two weeks (I don’t even want to consider how sick I could have been if I wasn’t obsessed about being up-to-date on my vaccinations). Now I have some lingering fatigue and a baby cough, but I’m definitely better. And, I’ve got so much work to catch up on. Thank god for audiobooks because that have let me keep up on my reading. What a boon to the world, the audiobook. Anyway, enough digressions. Back to my Unhauling update.

I’ve found two interesting things in this process and they have both been unexpected. The first is that as I remove books from their shelves, I’ve been really thinking about the space in my humble abode. I’m positively itching to rearrange all my furniture. I also want to change up what I showcase. Sure, I have art on my walls, but most of my decor is pretty much just bookshelves. Shabby library chic, book goblin style, if you will. But I obviously have other hobbies, like knitting. As I decide which books to part with, I’ve found myself thinking about how I could use some of that recovered shelf space to display my yarn. Or my finished projects. Or both. I’ve made a zillion and nine shawls in my life and I can really only wear them one at a time (or zero at a time right now when we all live on the surface of the sun.) The others are in a basket in my closet. The doesn’t seem right.

The second thing I really should have expected. As I go through and say goodbye to books (and a little to the version of me that bought them), I find I want to do this process with other things. Like there’s probably yarn I own that I’ll never knit with. Other crafts I’ll never do. Clothes that I’m not going to wear again and other assorted junk that I’m hanging onto… for some reason. I didn’t expect to get the bug to Marie Kondo my whole life. But here we are.

So, that’s the scoop. Shelves still full of books (and mostly still will be when I’m done with the project). And on a separate note, please take care of yourselves and your loved ones. If you can do things that save you from getting sick, like masking, I’d recommend it. Getting sick is no fun.