Alli the Book Giraffe

Hello readers! It’s Tuesday again and this week we are doing a Tell Me Something Tuesday post. How has everyone’s reading been going this month? Mine is going well. It is different from what I originally expected, but not in a bad way.

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a weekly meme created and hosted by That’s What I’m Talking About. Each week there is a prompt to talk about. If you would like to participate, you need to fill out this Google Form, and the prompts will be sent to your email bimonthly.

This weeks prompt: Have you found a way to cut back significantly on your TBR pile?

I found this topic so interesting. TBR piles are one of those topics in the book community that can get people heated. Everyone is different. And that’s okay! I personally have a pretty decently sized TBR pile at home. It does seem like I prefer buying books and not reading them for a long time.

There are a few things I have done in the past years to reduce my TBR pile, though. I don’t mind having a larger pile of books at all, but I don’t want books sitting on my shelves for years and years. If you have books on your TBR for 5+ years, that’s totally fine! I just get anxious looking at books that are that old on my shelf.

I must confess, I do have a few books that have sat on my shelves for more than 10 years! These include Stephen King books and a few of the Lord of the Rings.

The first thing I’ve done is to keep a list of all my unread books on Google Sheets. I am autistic, so I love my lists. I keep a detailed list of every book and what year I aquired the book. I have a list of every book I own, read and unread.

Another place I keep a list is on Libby. You can make tags on Libby to make different lists of books. I have a tag called OWNED where all my unread books sit which are available on Libby. When I don’t know what to read next, I can always browse that list on Libby.

I also unhaul books each year. This usually happens around December. I go over all my shelves and pick out a few books to unhaul that I have and haven’t read.

So, when it comes to decluttering, I can’t stand having books just hanging out on my TBR for more than 2 or 3 years. I’m gonna go through my list and get rid of most of the books that I haven’t touched within that timeframe at the end of the year. Now, Stephen King books are the exception here. I never unhaul Stephen King books, no matter how long they sit there. I am more interested in growing the collection than smashing through it.

Before my life took a giant left turn in the spring, I had a read it or unhaul it post planned for taking down this TBR. I had 8 books, most were in series, that I was to read or unhaul. I was actually doing it before everything went wrong. I ended up unhauling most of the books and going into one of the biggest slumps I’ve ever been in.

Hopefully, I can do a post like that again in the future! It would be fun to focus on those books that have been sitting on the shelf the longest in November or December as a challenge to ring in the new year. There is something so satisfying about decluttering and watching other people declutter.

What do you do to keep your TBR pile low? Or, are you the type that doesn’t care how big your TBR gets?

Happy blogging and bookish adventures! 📚🦒✨

This post was created by Allison Wolfe for www.allithebookgiraffe.com and is not permitted to be posted anywhere else.

Where to find me: https://linktr.ee/Allithebookgiraffe

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