If you’ve been wondering why there haven’t been any updates to Read Yourself Happy lately, it’s because my boyfriend and I recently moved. While we weren’t planning on moving, it ended up working out for the best – our leasing office decided that they wanted to renovate our unit, so they moved us into a much nicer one for the same price. I couldn’t be happier, as now we’re living on the second floor rather than the third (living on the third floor gets old really quickly), the unit is newly renovated and lovely, and we’ve got a fireplace!
While I’m excited about our new apartment, the actual practice of moving left me thinking about excess. We could only afford to hire movers for two hours, which got all of our furniture moved, but my boyfriend and I moved everything else by ourselves.
I didn’t realize how many things I owned, and how much of what I owned is useless.
Books (obviously), clothes, magazines, cups and plates, scarves, stationary… anything you can think of, I’ve got it. The problem, however, is that I never use 80% of it.
As we were walking up and down the stairs over and over again throughout the three days we had to move, I kept thinking about why I owned so many things, especially books. Yes, I’m a book blogger, and you could technically say that it’s my job to read books, but why do I need to own all of them? Ebooks are usually cheaper and take up no real space, and library books are free and returnable. There are options besides spending money and hoarding items.
I’m in no way saying that owning anything, including books, is inherently bad. I’ll never be a minimalist. However, I do think that I need to become more conscious of what sort of items I’m permanently bringing into my life. I have no issue purchasing a book by an author I’ve loved for years, but should I be buying a book from an author I’ve never read? What if I end up hating it? For those kinds of things, I’d much rather rely on the library until I know for sure.
As I write this, I’m sitting in our new living room, where books are strewn across the floor waiting to find a more permanent spot. Our apartment is small and I’ve got very limited shelf space. My goal moving forward is to only purchase books that I know I’ll read over and over again, such as anything by Neil Gaiman or Brandon Sanderson. For everything else, however, I really want to make use of the wonderful resource that is the public library system.
Read Yourself Happy 
I’ve been in your situation and moving books is a big job! I’ve worked hard to pare down the number of books I own. Since I work in a library, I’m lucky to have an endless supply of books to borrow!
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