A Lifetime of Books: Downsizing a Claremont Library

Of all the categories in a household, books cause the most trouble in a downsize. Not because there is anything difficult about a book. Because there are so many of them, they are individually meaningful, and they weigh a great deal.

In a college town, this is not a small category. Claremont households frequently hold libraries built over decades, sometimes professionally, sometimes simply by a lifetime of reading. Telling someone to keep a shelf and let the rest go is not advice, it is a shrug.

So here is a method that treats the collection seriously.

Measure the shelving before you sort a single book

Almost everyone sorts first and measures second, and that is why the sorting has to be done twice.

Count your linear feet of shelving now. Not the number of bookcases, the running feet of shelf. Then work out what the new place can hold, honestly, which means the walls where a bookcase can actually stand once furniture, doors, windows, and heating vents are accounted for.

The difference between those two numbers is the size of the decision. If it is small, the sort is a light edit. If the new place holds a third of what you have, that is a different project and it deserves a different amount of time.

Knowing the number early also prevents the worst outcome, which is boxes of books that arrive with nowhere to go and end up in a garage. The same trap that swallows other categories, described in the storage unit trap in a Claremont downsize, catches books particularly easily because nobody wants to make the decision under time pressure.

Sort by relationship, not by subject

The instinct is to sort by category. History here, fiction there. That is how a library is organised and it is a poor way to decide what leaves.

Sort instead by what the book is to you.

There are books you will read again, and you know which ones. There are books you refer to, which is different, and reference books earn shelf space by being consulted rather than enjoyed. There are books that are objects as much as texts, because of who gave them to you or what they were signed by. There are books you own because you meant to read them. And there are books you own because they came into the house and never left.

Those five groups shrink at wildly different rates. The last group is usually large and usually easy. The aspirational group is the honest one, and it is worth being kind to yourself about it, because owning a book you never read is not a failure, it is just a book.

Deal with the heavy sets early

Encyclopedias, bound journal runs, multi-volume sets, and old textbooks are the mass problem. They occupy enormous shelf length and they are the hardest to place, because the information in many of them is now available elsewhere and the market for them is thin.

Handle these first rather than last. They are the decisions that free real space, and leaving them to the end means making them while exhausted, which produces a truck.

If a set has genuine value, it needs someone who can tell you so. A general secondhand dealer and a specialist in the field will give very different answers about the same shelf.

Where books actually go

There is no single destination, and thinking there is one causes stalls.

Special collections and university libraries occasionally accept donations, but they are selective and they have their own priorities. It is worth asking about a genuinely specialised collection, and worth not being wounded if the answer is no. Their answer is about their holdings, not about your books.

Public library friends groups, hospital and community book sales, and local charities take general stock, sometimes in volume, sometimes with limits on condition and quantity. Call before loading a car.

Used bookshops buy selectively. A dealer taking two boxes out of twelve is normal, and the eight they leave are not worthless, they are simply not what sells in that shop.

Online selling works well for scarce titles and works badly as a plan for a whole library, because it is a slow, per-item job. Selling forty books individually is a hobby, not a moving strategy.

And some books should go to people. A colleague, a former student, a grandchild who reads. Placing a book with someone who wanted it is the outcome that feels least like loss.

Consider the paper that is not a book

Alongside the shelves there is usually a second collection: papers, offprints, correspondence, teaching files, research notes, manuscripts. This is a different problem and it should not be sorted in the same session, because the decision-making is a different kind of tiring.

Some of it belongs in an archive. Some of it should be scanned. Some of it is genuinely finished and can go. That work is covered separately in photographs, papers, and records going digital and in a lifetime of paperwork.

Plan for weight, not just volume

Books are the densest thing in a household. Movers price and pack them accordingly, and floors have opinions about where a full wall of shelving stands.

Two practical notes. First, use small boxes, filled properly, and do not be tempted by large ones. Second, if the new home is not on a single level, think about where the shelving goes before moving day rather than during it. Carrying a library upstairs twice is a memorable mistake.

Give it more time than the rest of the house

Books resist being sorted quickly because each one asks a small question. An afternoon produces less progress than you expect, and that is normal rather than a sign of doing it wrong.

Start early, work in short sessions, and stop before it stops being a considered decision. Anything sorted while worn out gets sorted again later.

If you are working out how a lifetime of belongings fits into a smaller Claremont home, the rest of the cluster is at the downsizing hub, and the wider version of this sorting problem is set out in thirty years of stuff.

Anthony Grynchal has been licensed in California since November 2009.