A Problem With Which I Am Familiar

This guy has a problem.

Unfortunately, I have the same problem. Books seem to multiply in our house. They are stacked two deep on some shelves, hidden in boxes, and completely fill our shelves. We simply don't have room for more, although that will have no impact on our book buying decisions in the future.

However, we did make some progress in reducing our load this week.

Thanks to the undisclosed crack in our foundation, we had to clear out two rooms in the basement. And by clear out, I mean, everything had to go. Good-bye moldy, orange carpet (the scrapbook nazi would say good riddance). Good-bye wood paneling glued, not nailed, to the walls. Good-bye akwardly built storage bench and pull-down movie screen that we never used. Good-bye death couch. Good-bye rickety, rusting storage shelves left behind by the previous homeowner. You were all so good to me.

And good-bye six boxes crammed with books we finally decided we will never read again. Mostly text books, but there were a few others, including the SN's well-loved (two stars) copy of The Bridges of Madison County, quite possibly the worst book ever written.

So we still have something like 50 boxes worth of books crammed on shelves and hidden away in storage, but 2008 is shaping up as the first year in our lives that we got rid of more books than we took in (it may be close).

In some ways that feels like progress, but I will always miss my copy of Living with Nuclear Weapons.