My husband and I might move. (Then again, we might not.) As we spend more and more time in our house, thanks to pandemic work-from-home mandates, we see its flaws, and we dream of perfection: A half-acre yard for the dogs. A bathroom on the main level for us. More sun for the garden. A street that doesn't have UPS trucks rattling past every 10 minutes — that one would be for all of us.
But the idea of moving is daunting, because, like most people in America, we have too much stuff. I look around the house and the thought of packing it all up exhausts me.
The answer is to downsize. To start, I can probably get rid of my work clothes, since who knows when I will ever again work somewhere other than my dining-room table. And when I do go back to the newsroom, the "COVID 15" (pounds) might necessitate a new wardrobe anyway.
I can probably get rid of most of my shoes, too, since these days I wear fuzzy slippers in the house and sneakers on the dog walks and I don't go anywhere else. All my funky boots and cute ballet flats could be donated.
But clothing and shoes do not take up a lot of room. They fit in a closet. You shut the closet door. Clutter is gone.
Except for all the other clutter. Which is, in our house, books.
Books! Books are everywhere. Neatly slotted onto bookcases and bookshelves — and then piled horizontally on top. Stacked on dining room chairs, kitchen table, bedside tables and de facto bedside table (the floor). Stacks of books stacked on top of stacks of books.
Thousands. We have thousands of books.
The last time I wrote about culling books — six years ago — nostalgia was my biggest obstacle. Just about every book I opened contained some sort of ephemera that stopped me: a bookmark from a long-gone bookstore, a scribble from a mostly-forgotten college class, an old photograph or letter, or, most nostalgic of all, my late father's signature and marginalia.
Books, I wrote then, are my diary. Through inscriptions and ephemera, they mark my life, the places I've been, the bookstores I prowled, the people I knew.
Six years later, sentimentality remains an obstacle, but there's another obstacle, just as formidable: Practicality.
Once I've sorted out the books to get rid of and I've boxed them up, what then? Where do they go? Who wants them?
I can't invite a bookseller to come into my home and sort through them, not in this time of COVID.
The used-book store where I used to bring books has closed. It was a wonderful option, because they'd tote up how much money they would pay me and then I would donate the money right back to them for their teachers' fund.
Little Free Libraries are an option, and I have a box of books in the back of my car earmarked for them. But most of the little libraries I pass these days are full; a lot of them are doing dual duty as repositories of books and also of canned goods, masks and hand sanitizer.
Goodwill takes books, but have you seen the line for donations lately? Everyone is decluttering at the same time.
It's quite possible that these are all just excuses. It could be that I'm having trouble deciding where to donate books because I don't really want to donate books at all.
Perhaps a better option is not to cull, but to tidy: Dust the shelves, find room for the piles, organize them in some logical fashion. If we brought order to the book chaos, they would no longer be clutter. We could probably live with all these books for a very long time.
Unless, of course, we decide to move.
Laurie Hertzel is the senior editor for books. E-mail: books@startribune.com
