Clear Some Book Clutter — 10 Tips

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When is it time to clear out some of your clutter? As Beth Morrissey said in The Writer Magazine, (p. 11, 2010, not sure which month), it’s time when “disarray” has reached “dismay.” Is that the state you’re in?

Let’s start with ten tips for dealing with your books. Academics and other writers have many, many books. We’re starting with our books as a way of clearing the clutter because you will see an immediate improvement and will be motivated to continue with some of the de-cluttering that may be more difficult.

1. Buy book ends. I am not kidding. And buy GOOD BOOK ENDS. You need strong, sturdy, designed-to-actually-hold-up-books bookends. [Note: Get rid of any flimsy or merely decorative book ends that are not doing their job.]
2. Stand up all your books that are on shelves with their spines out. Do you see why I had you get book ends first? Stand up all those books you have and use the book ends to hold them up. You don’t have to do anything else yet except buy book ends and stand up all the books with their spines out.
3. Grab any and all books that are lying on their sides and stacked in piles on your shelves and put them in the vertical position. You can do this!
4. Grab any and all books that are lying face down on flat surfaces around your work space (which may include your whole house). Put a post-it® note on the page the book was opened to so that it extends past the edge of the page. On the post-it® note, write down the reason you had this page marked (i.e., why it was lying face down). If you can’t remember why, just close the book and put it on the shelf vertically (spine out, of course).
5. Look in the drawers of your work space. If there are books in any of them, put them on the shelves, too.
6. Look in your file cabinet drawers and if you see books there, put them on your book shelves.
7. You should now have every book you own on a book shelf, placed vertically, with the spine out. You may want to take a break because this likely took some time and effort but I hope you feel kind of surprised at yourself and can already feel a bit of an energy lift. When you’re ready, continue with the eighth tip.
8. Start on the topmost shelf on the bookshelf that is the furthest from your desk. Regardless of whether it contains 20, 30, or 40 books, remove one of those books to give away to someone else. If you are so inspired, challenge yourself to remove more than one book, but you must at least release one book from each one of the bookshelves.
9. Challenge yourself to ultimately have at least 6″ of free shelf on each of your bookshelves that contains books. That means 6″ of each individual shelf. Note: This is why you needed bookends because your shelves are not ultimately going to be “edge to edge/wall to wall” with books.
10. Set aside 15 minutes each day toward this project. You may work longer that 15 minutes, but recognize that there are many decisions to be made while sorting and choosing books to keep and books to give to someone else, so decision fatigue can easily set in. That’s why 15 minutes is sometimes enough for one day.

And if you liked these tips you may be interested in the Get a Plan! Guide® to Ridding Your Workspace of Clutter part of the Get a Plan! Guides® series designed to give you the ideas and inspiration to do your work easier, faster, and in a more focused fashion.