The Arrival of Book Week (aka Week 4 of the 16-Week Plan)

The first three weeks of the 16-week plan have gone pretty well.The original schedule, as I'm sure you recall, was:

Week 1 -- 50 boxes
Week 2 -- 50 boxes
Week 3 -- rest of boxes


I got through 50 boxes the first week, 53 boxes the second week, and 57 boxes the third week. Unfortunately,  in some cases "going through" meant opening the box, finding it was full of books, and setting the box aside for Book Week. If I recall correctly, there were about 80 boxes of books, not to mention all the books already on bookshelves.

And now Book Week has arrived. Due to the lack of distractions (we lost our satellite dish, so no TV) -- and the desire to stay indoors (it stayed below freezing all week) -- I did a rough sort of the non-fiction books last week. This week, I am going through the sorted piles and doing yet another sort. This is a three-part sort -- books I definitely want to keep at least for the present, books I can live without, and books I can't decide about. The "definitely keep" books are going back onto shelves, which is freeing up some space in the hallway.

If you don't believe me about the free space, check out the previous picture of the books in the hallway. The trash bag in this picture, by the way, is one of five trash bags full of clothes and bedding that is going to be donated tomorrow. It's just there so I won't forget about them in the morning.

Unfortunately, the pile of books that we will not be keeping is growing and I haven't quite figured out where all these books are going to go. We considered selling some of them online, but I'm not impressed by the prices other sellers are asking for the same books.

And all those boxes full of fiction are there in the background, mocking me. I have to admit that I have my doubts about getting through all of the books in one week. But I'm about halfway through the non-fiction, so maybe I can finish that up tomorrow. Then on Wednesday, I can sort the fiction alphabetically by author. And On Thursday, I can sort through the A-M piles and on Friday I can sort throug the N-Z piles.

Yeah, right.

I may have to reassess that plan toward the end of the week.

And even so, that plan doesn't take into account the fact that the living room has piles of children's books and homeschooling books that will need to be dealt with at some point.

But look at the shelves in the background! Those books neatly stacked on the shelves are the results of the culling I have done over the past two days. That's progress of a sort.

In other news, the kittens are growing. Sophie, our first kitten of 2010 fills the box.

And Parker curls up with a surprising cuddle buddy:

And last, but not least, Kaylee:

That is a very popular box.

Week 3 -- Boxes and Books

While I have been going through the last few boxes of assorted items from the garage, I also decided to get a jump on Book Week(s) by sorting through all those boxes of books. We started with a very rough sort -- fiction/non-fiction -- but ended up with a couple of extra categories like homeschooling materials and children's books.

The coffee table is piled up with curricular materials and books bought while we were homeschooling. The boxes and books on the floor are children's books, all the way from picture books up.

Non-fiction seemed like an easier sort than fiction, partly because we have (slightly) less of it, especially if you don't count all the Jewish books filling about half the shelves in the living room. The rough sort of non-fiction was done using the Dewey Decimal system rather loosely. I made up 10 signs with the most general categories, along with a list of what types of subjects are included in each category.

We found that some categories were somewhat subjective, so we'll probably end up doing a more specific sort as the next step. I was also deeply disappointed that, despite our extensive science-fiction collection, we didn't seem to have a single book that fit into Dewey Decimal category 999 -- Geography and History of Extraterrestrial Worlds. Too bad.

The sorted books currently extend down the front hall.

And wrap around the corner into the kitchen. But I rather cleverly placed most of the cookbooks there, so who would know?

Tomorrow I plan to finish going through the last two non-book boxes. Both are full of papers, which tend to make for slow going. Then it's posting things to Freecycle and back to sorting books.

In other news:

Snow came to Dodge today. Nothing like what is happening in the Northeastern part of the US, but enough to bring Dodge to a dead stop due to lack of snow removal equipment. The forecast is for continued sub-freezing temperatures, so this may be around for a few days.