I think I'm gonna try FlyLady . . . I have an aversion to uncluttered horizontal surfaces. Every table, shelf, and desk in our home is covered with books or crafting stuff. Our garage has 14 boxes of books in it . . . my closet has 10 more.
My husband wants me to lose 'em, but the perennial student in me cringes at the thought of getting rid of books.
If you can't get rid of them, at least build shelves for them. There's a great show called "Clean Sweep" where clutterers are forced to part with their junk; when they protest that something really matters to them (like all your books) the rejoinder is, "Why aren't you taking care of them, if they have value to you?"
I have at least one bookcase in every room in the house....Cookbooks in the kitchen, artsy stuff in the living room etc.
I do understand dealing with accumulating stuff. One of the best things I ever did was start buying those plastic drawer bins at Walmart. They come in different sizes and stack. I slap lables on the front of them and throw stuff in them etc. Absolutely a must have for crafting supplies.
I have them in different spots in the house...backs of closets, under beds, office, attic etc. OK, that is how I deal with the madness.
if i turn up missing, someone needs to tell xshub to check the stitchroom....
Yeah, well, books are different...
I hear ya on the books, Xena. We have a good amount of books as well, but every once in a while, I find a few that we won't miss and take them to a little used book shop. They usually give me store credit. So I can buy MORE books. The cycle goes on and on.
I still cry over all the National Geographics my parents threw away when they sold the house. Now that I'm older, I'll devour a NG in a few hours, and not just the pictures. The articles were really well written. So now I'm picking up issues here and there and trying to build a collection. I promised not to buy anything older than 1980 though.
One compromise I came to (trust me, at first it wasn't easy) was getting rid of all my paperback books. There were a very small number that I had to hang on to since they weren't available in hardcover editions, but the culling of the rest of them really helped matters and made me feel good in the process. If you're freaking out about getting rid of them, try putting them in a box for a month or so. Once they've been in there for awhile, pull them out and take another look at them. I think you'll find that once they've been seperated from the hardcover books and the ones that you really treasure for some time it gets easier to load them into the back of your car and get rid of them.