Buying a new book takes just a few minutes. Reading that book may take several hours or even days. A large book collection on the other hand, can take years to read.
It’s easy to overlook this fact when we find something interesting in a bookshop. We decide we can surely squeeze another treasured book onto the shelf and rarely stop to think about where the time to read it will come from, yet a large book collection can represent years of reading, learning and doing. Sometimes far more years than we would ever choose to devote to those particular books if we stopped to think about it.
How much reading time is sitting on your shelves?
I have always, always loved to read.
Minimalism is something I find hard to apply to books, although I’m better than I was. There is nearly always a reason to keep a book, particularly when it contains something I want to learn or a story I still hope to read.
So, at one point, I decided to try a dose of realism. Instead of counting how many books I owned and trying to declutter them, I worked out roughly how much time it would take to use everything I already had.
My collection included 13 fiction books, 92 non-fiction books, 12 reference books, 32 technical books and 32 cookery books.
Using a deliberately rough estimate of 300 pages and 45 seconds per page, I allowed three hours and 45 minutes for each fiction and non-fiction book. For the technical books, I allowed 24 hours each, because programming manuals involve working through examples and understanding concepts as well as reading the words.
I left the reference books out of the calculation, as they were there to consult when needed.
The total came to almost 1,162 hours. Even with an hour of reading every day, that’s more than three years.
For the cookery books, I assumed an average of 100 recipes each. That gave me 3,200 recipes, enough to try something new every day for the best part of nine years.
Given that I was more likely to cook a new recipe once a fortnight, my collection could have kept me going for almost 123 years.
Seriously!!
And how often do I buy a new book on a whim??
If I made a resolution to not buy any more books until I’d read everything I owned, it would be over a decade before I could even look at anything else.
And that’s not even including my Kindle books and various eBooks.
Now admittedly, not everything on my bookshelf is unread – so those figures would be reduced somewhat – but it is still astonishing to think that what I own has already taken up that much of my future time (even subconsciously from just having all those books in view).
I think it might be time to prioritise the books I really want to read.
Of course, I want to read all of them (hence why I own them), but do I really want to commit the next twelve years to these particular books? I think there will probably be many other books that catch my eye in that time.
They aren’t ornaments. If they aren’t being used, then why have them all on a shelf year after year?
Minimalising my books needs to be a two pronged attack of:
- Reading more.
- Being more selective about what I read.
I have a vision of only owning a handful of books that I am actively using, or return to over and again as my favourite stories.
Book-nirvana.
Wanting to read (or do) something isn’t the same as having the time to read (or do) it
Books make this easy to calculate, but the same principle applies to plenty of other things.
Craft supplies represent projects we could make. Courses represent things we could learn. Games, tools and hobby equipment all offer ways to spend our time, provided we actually have the time available.
We own more possibilities than we can ever use.
Choose what you want to make time for
What’s the time cost of your book collection? Or your crafting collection? Or your DVD collection? If you had to commit that time to what you own today and stick to it, would you do it?
Looking at the time cost of your possessions is another tool to help you declutter and downsize, to live a simpler life that is less busy, less stressful and calmer. For more guidance and articles on all sorts of decluttering issues and solutions, see my ultimate guide on decluttering your home.
If you want more support, and you’re just starting out with decluttering, I have a course, created from my years of experience in learning how to live with less, that gently guides you in the right direction: Too Much Stuff? Start Here. It’s £7, and you get instant access.
