Lifestyle

5 Types of Books You Should Declutter From Your Shelves

mindbeautysimplicity

I’ve been decluttering my home inch by inch to give it a proper refresh. The other day, I noticed my bookshelves are filling up fast. And not all the books on there are worthy of a permanent home. So, I went through & donated a few books that weren’t very good, one’s I probably will never read or ones I won’t re-read. As much as I would love to have a home library one day, I want to be sure most of the books I collect & keep are top tier. Here are 5 Types of Books You Should Declutter From Your Shelves

Books You DNF

Sometimes I’ll DNF a book & come back to it later because I’m a bit of a mood reader. But sometimes a book just doesn’t make the cut for whatever reason. And when that happens, it doesn’t deserve to stay on my bookshelf. A book I’m considering decluttering that I DNFed this past year is Ghost Story by Peter Staud. I was looking forward to reading this one during spooky season, but as I started reading I didn’t know how old the book was & the writing style was just not my cup of tea. I don’t know if or when I’ll pick it up again.

Popular Books You Dislike

Just because it’s hyped on the internet & it seems like EVERYONE loves it doesn’t mean you will. There were a few books I read this year that were extremely talked about & lots of people gave five stars. But I would consider them to be flops. For instance, everyone seems to love Where The Crawdad’s Sing but I just found it rather boring.

Series You Will Never Finish

I for one, always seem to commit to finishing an entire series especially if I own all the books. But sometimes, it doesn’t hit & there’s no sense in wasting your time on finishing it. This past year I read three series including ACOTAR, Throne of Glass & The Red Rising saga. Luckily, all three of those series were incredible. But there are a few I am hesitant to read including The Wheel of Time series [ which my husband loves] or the Shatter Me Series, Addicted Series or the Folk of Air series. Some just feel either too long or too YA for my taste.

3 Star Reviews or Below

To make sure I don’t become a hoarder of books, I try to keep to a motto of decluttering books I rate 3 stars or below. Rarely do I re-read books with such low ratings. Although 3 stars is relatively high, I always ask myself if I’m going to read it again. If the answer is no, I’d much rather donate it to someone else to read or sell it. A few books I’ve decluttered from this category include Where The Crawdad’s Sing & The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren.

Books You Enjoyed & Will Never Re-read

Even if I really enjoyed a book, there are some times where it’s a one & done type of read. There are some cases where I want to make space for new books & sometimes you just have to narrow them down. Types of books that fall in this category for me are romance books, seasonal reads, self help nonfiction, or memoirs.

Tropes That Aren’t Done Well or Overdone

We all have favorite tropes. Mine in particular lean towards enemies to lovers [ especially in the fantasy genre], friends to lovers, found family, who done it & strong female leads. But there are some authors that don’t hit the nail on the head. Especially someone who has read a lot of books with similar tropes, you tend to find yourself ranking them. I discovered I far more enjoy enemies to lovers trope in a fantasy world over everyday life scenario. Keep your favorites & let go of the rest.

One of my favorite ways to declutter my book collection is to read more books digitally. If there are popular books I’m not sure I’ll enjoy, I’ll try to find them free on Kindle Unlimited or audiobooks. A few books I loved listening to on audio include It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey, Heartbones by Colleen Hoover & Circe by Madeline Miller.

What were some of your least favorite books of 2022?

-B

Published by mindbeautysimplicity

31 thoughts on “5 Types of Books You Should Declutter From Your Shelves”

    2. Happy to read that you like e books. I own a Kindle since last March . The reason is simple, I wanted to see what my book ( published in September 2022) look like on that device and of course I noticed that many people buy e books ( cheaper than the paperback and so practical when you travel). I have bought quite a few e books too. If you think about reading a Camino story, try mine as a sample or buy it. On Foot in France is on Amazon.

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  9. I rarely buy books these days since I rediscovered our public library. Sometimes you have to wait for a while to get your hands on a popular title but it beats spending money on a book that turns out to be disappointing. One book that I didn’t enjoy last year was “The Art of the Good Life” by Rolf Dobelli. I found it was mostly common sense, and some of his ideas I just couldn’t get behind.

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  13. I only keep books that have sentimental value, that I will read again, or that I enjoyed so much that I’d want to give it to someone as a present one day 🙂

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  14. We have a huge book sale at our public library. As a volunteer I can take 10 books for free- which I did last October. I shall read them eventually and if I do not want them anymore I can always put them in tiny libraries that became quite popular over the pandemic ( and maybe before) .. that way we all can find a book we can read and it does not cost us a penny!!

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