Down the TBR Hole | Mass Clear Out Part 1: Older Additions

Down the TBR Hole was originally created by Lia @ Lost in a Story

Hey everyone. This post is going to be quite a bit different from my previous Down the TBR Hole posts as it’s going to be a bit of a mega-post in honor of the coming academic year (i.e when my ‘new year’ technically starts because I’ve been in education for too long and my entire life runs around the academic calendar). I love clear-outs and I especially love sorting through my physical and virtual TBR shelves. However, I’ve always found it frustrating to only do my TBR clear-outs in small increments bi-monthly rather than just doing it all in one go. Things end up building up faster than they are gotten rid of and if I continue doing two posts a month with about 10 TBR books each it would take me about 10.5 months to go through the books I already have on my shelves…

So, rather than drag this out any longer than it needs to be I’m gonna hit y’all with two beastly posts divided into older TBR additions and newer TBR additions to sort out which I’m keeping, which I’m getting rid of and which are on their last chance. It’s going to be ruthless and it’s going to be tough but I am aiming for those nice clean shelves in time for the start of the new academic term at the end of September!

This post is devoted to “older additions” which includes anything pre-October 2018. Some of these will have appeared on previous Down the TBR Hole posts but may have been reconsidered since then.

Down the TBR Hole | #6 The Curse of February 2018 and Owned Books

Down the TBR Hole was originally created by Lia @ Lost in a Story

Welcome back to my Down the TBR Hole series, friends. I haven’t done a Down the TBR Hole post for well over a month now meaning that my TBR list has been slowly creeping back up again, though I have been hardcore sticking to the DtTH deadlines I set for myself which has been a massive help.

Let’s plunge in and see what’s up on the chopping block this session!

Down the TBR Hole | March Deadlines

Down the TBR Hole was originally created by Lia @ Lost in a Story

Welcome to the first of my Down the TBR Hole deadline reviews! If you’ve ever read any of my Down the TBR Hole posts, you may have noticed that I also assign myself a deadline date for those books that I do decide to keep. Although this is not a feature of the original Down the TBR Hole, I know that I would likely continue to let these books sit on my TBR shelf unless I gave myself a motivation to read them. By assigning deadlines, it was my hope that I would be giving myself an incentive to hurry up and read the books or else force myself to discard them from my TBR – holding me accountable for my keeps and motivating me to read!

Let’s see how I did for my Round One – March Deadline books:

Down the TBR Hole |#5

Down the TBR Hole was originally created by Lia @ Lost in a Story

Hey friendies, welcome back to our normal Down the TBR Hole service. Last time, we took a little diversion from the usual format of Down the TBR Hole to use the KonMarie method on my physical book shelves. ICYMI you can find the post here! It turned out to be a super successful way to sort through all of my books and my house (and bookshelves) feel a lot nicer. I’ve also been making some progress on my first Down the TBR Hole deadlines which I’ll be sharing in a progress post soon.

For now though, let’s crack on with our normal service and keep tackling that pesky Goodreads shelf.

How it works:

• Go to your goodreads to-read shelf.
• Order on ascending date added.
• Take the first 5 (or 10 books)
• Read the synopses of the books
• Decide: keep it or should it go?

Down the TBR Hole | Using the #KonMarie method for my Physical Shelves

Today I had planned to do the next round of Down the TBR Hole but considering that I have just done a major reorganization of my actual bookshelves using the Marie Kondo method I thought it would be really fun to share this progress with you all instead. Apologies for the crappy photo quality in advance, my phone camera is not great!

The second stage of Marie Kondo method, books, was one that I was simultaneously dreading but also really looking forward to. I find it quite difficult to sort out my books as these are objects that I am obviously quite attached to but I was also finding myself becoming frustrated with my bookshelves looking cluttered with too many books. Rather than just buying another bookshelf to fix the problem, I decided that I wanted to have a good sort through the books I own to see which ones I was invested in keeping and which ones I could donate to new homes. 

The thing I love the most about the Marie Kondo method is that she encourages us not to think about getting rid of things but to make space for the things that we want to appreciate more and that spark joy for us, rather than them being hidden away in amongst a mess of other things. This definitely helped me to sort through my books in a way where I didn’t feel guilty about “getting rid of” books but instead focus on the beautiful books that spark joy for me that I wanted to spend more time with.