Minimizing Monday -- book shelves (yikes!)

I actually tackled my bookshelves a few weeks back when I had my minimizing motivation without a place to direct it. Here is the result of my successful and freeing bookshelf purge:

Now, this past year I already went through and weeded out about twice this amount of books that I did not want. Now I needed to weed out the things I do not need. I think that is the difference between decluttering and minimizing. Decluttering removes the clutter, minimizing only preserves the essentials.

As always, I know I could probably do even more. Someone else would still see 20 books I could do away with from their perspective. Minimizing continues even after the initial purge as the mindset takes hold.

Here are the books and videos that I removed from my shelves. Most of these I haven't used or could easily borrow from the library if I want to reread them some time:

Of course, as always, my kids had a hard time parting with their "favorite" _______ that I had put in the pile. However, I persevered and was rewarded with this:

That holds all my kids' current homeschool books as well as items I need to keep on hand for the coming year(s). I used to have the base of the hutch full of books as well, but was able to move all of that onto the shelves and still have some room to spare. In addition, I cleared off all the dog paraphernalia that we kept on the windowsill and stored it in the hutch now. Not only do I have a neater bookshelf, I have an almost empty windowsill (aside from the bag of library books).

Feeling motivated to minimize? Please, feel free to go after your bookshelves or some other deserving nook and cranny of your home, and share about it on Handprints on the Wall.