April Disposals

For April disposals I will tackle the hardest disposals of all—books. I love books, my husband loves books, and both our kids LOVE books. Powell's Bookstore is one of our favorite places to visit. When the kids were little, the library was a very regular visit; weekly in the summer. My kids always knew Mom was a sucker for books. If we were on vacation or visiting a tourist attraction, the kids knew I could probably be talked into a book souvenir. I have the largest book collection at our school, and it was with stiff-upper-lipped determination I approached our book shelves.

There are 91books in the disposal pile. Rather than listing each of the books in that pile, I am going to list some of the books we kept.

• All Randy Alcorn's books were kept. We love Randy and his writing. These books have been read more than once and will probably be read again, however, if that has not happened when it comes time to move from this house, they will be passed on to others.
• My most loved book by Mac Lucado and one by Charles Swindoll were kept, however only one from each author. These men greatly influenced my early Christian years. I had to keep one from each. I have vowed to read these two books again this summer.
• The books we have received or purchased to assist with marriage mentoring were kept.
• We still have all the Bibles the kids had through their growing up years. I kept those, to maybe pass down to grandchildren one day.
• My "Quilt in a Day" books were kept, as I have hopes of quilting again in the future, and maybe Lynsey will want to borrow these one day.
• Several general craft books were kept for the same reason I kept the quilting books.
• We own quite a few books related to genealogy; historical books about my hometown and such. These serve a purpose far different from a pleasure book and they need to be kept.
• We have a strange and assorted collection of vintage books. Some came from Tom's grandparents and some are books I have purchased—specifically the 1950' Dick and Jane readers. 

That is the essence of what I kept. As I read Dave Bruno's book The 100 Thing Challenge I appreciated that the author counted his library as one thing. I don't have plans to get down to only 100 things, but my minimizing goal will be to keep our book collection to those books that can fit on one of our book shelves.

In addition to the 91 books that were disposed of, I let go of 4 purses, 3 pair of shoes, and 1 sweater. It should be mentioned that 2 additional pair of shoes went in the garbage. One was a very tired pair of slippers I haven't worn for over 2 years and the other pair of shoes were a well loved pair of blue shoes. Zoey helped make the decision to dispose of that old pair.