4 ms·

I am currently planning a move from Austria back the US and I have decided to sell or dispose of the vast majority of my belongings. I did less of this moving

I am currently planning a move from Austria back the US and I have decided to sell or dispose of the vast majority of my belongings. I did less of this moving from the US to Austria and when it came time to move this time I realised that I had a significant pile of boxes which, while opened, went unused in the twenty years I've lived here. I also have an extensive library which, while I read the books when I bought them, I have not returned to the vast majority of them. I'm still sort of conflicted about this because it's provoking a lot of complex emotions that I was not particularly prepared for.

secondcoming 5y ago
Books are nice to have on a shelf, but a pain to have to move around. I'll no longer buy books until I actually own my home.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I've spent a lot of effort moving physical media around that, today, could be digital. I still have a ton of books, most of which I'll never open again, but I like to think that starting over in today's world I'd have much less of that sort of thing.
the_lonely_road 5y ago
Maybe you are like me and maybe you are not but I made the exact same decision about my library for the exact same reasons almost a decade ago and while it was liberating for a few years to not have to box and unbox them, I still to this day get sad when I think about it and regret it. I never realized how attached I was to my library, to browsing the labels and briefly remembering the story and its connection to that part of my youth where I read it. Good luck with your move.
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  My experience may be relevant: 23 years ago my wife and I moved from a fairly large house near the beach in San Diego to a fairly tiny house in the mountains in Central Arizona. Getting rid of excess furniture was easy (I gave my Eames Chair and standing teak chess board to people I really liked), but I had a huge library. For many years I bought about one book a week from the San Diego Technical Bookstore. I got rid of about 60% of my physical books, so I only had two large bookshelves in my home office. After temporarily moving for work, I cut my books down to half a large book shelf, my wife using the other half. The trick that worked for me was to just keep books that I had a strong emotional attachment to. Some books that I want to refer to I simply re-purchase as eBooks from Google or Kindle. Now half my physical books non-technical (Joseph Campbell, spiritual stuff, favorite literature).

secondcoming 5y ago

Books are nice to have on a shelf, but a pain to have to move around. I'll no longer buy books until I actually own my home.

ghaff 5y ago
I've spent a lot of effort moving physical media around that, today, could be digital. I still have a ton of books, most of which I'll never open again, but I like to think that starting over in today's world I'd have much less of that sort of thing.

the_lonely_road 5y ago

Maybe you are like me and maybe you are not but I made the exact same decision about my library for the exact same reasons almost a decade ago and while it was liberating for a few years to not have to box and unbox them, I still to this day get sad when I think about it and regret it. I never realized how attached I was to my library, to browsing the labels and briefly remembering the story and its connection to that part of my youth where I read it. Good luck with your move.

mark_l_watson 5y ago
My experience may be relevant: 23 years ago my wife and I moved from a fairly large house near the beach in San Diego to a fairly tiny house in the mountains in Central Arizona. Getting rid of excess furniture was easy (I gave my Eames Chair and standing teak chess board to people I really liked), but I had a huge library. For many years I bought about one book a week from the San Diego Technical Bookstore. I got rid of about 60% of my physical books, so I only had two large bookshelves in my home office. After temporarily moving for work, I cut my books down to half a large book shelf, my wife using the other half. The trick that worked for me was to just keep books that I had a strong emotional attachment to. Some books that I want to refer to I simply re-purchase as eBooks from Google or Kindle. Now half my physical books non-technical (Joseph Campbell, spiritual stuff, favorite literature).