My Love for Buying Books Is Waning and I Feel Guilty About It

I am—unfortunately—no Marie Kondo, but I do enjoy having a decluttered house. Once a hoarder of anything that might be useful someday, and of anything with some slight sentimental value, over the years I’ve come to collect fewer and fewer things, giving away all that I was not using, and was very unlikely to use again. I’ve become more comfortable in a home without clutter, but books have always been, and still are, my only exception.

To start with, my relationship to books is not the same as with everything else: book are treasures, not clutter. They’re greatly shaped too, easy to pile up inside boxes in case I need to move houses again, and I can put them pretty much anywhere. No more space on the bookshelf? It’s okay, I have smaller shelves and tables where they’ll fit great! I have a floor, too, and, as said before, a lot more room for books, since my house is not too cluttered with stuff anymore. Despite this, more and more, I find myself going into bookstores and coming home empty-handed, especially if I didn’t go in thinking about buying a particular volume. I haven’t received books in the mail for months, either. And while, on one hand, I know that means that I’m finally being a responsible person and going through my TBR pile, that I am finally acting upon the understanding that I’m not going to read that book anyway, because I still have at least 20 I want to read first, so why spend money on it right now…on the other hand, this makes me sad.