divine angst

In preparation for selling our home, Mr. Angst and I are doing some hard-core spring cleaning. To that end, we spent about an hour this afternoon going through our books. Mr. Angst has one more bookshelf to go through, but we’re basically done with the book-weeding.

And it’s hard. I have books that I’ve carted around for years in the hopes that I’ll reread them one day, or that I’ll use them for reference. I have books I read once and loved and wanted to hold on to forever. I have books I went through hell to obtain, so I would always have them. Yet somehow, books in all of these categories are going away. We now have two laundry baskets filled with books to take to the we-buy-your-used-books store. I don’t think we’ll get much—they’re pretty well known for not giving much cash for paperbacks. But I have a few complete series, and I have several first-edition hardbacks, and maybe we’ll get enough money back to buy some fine wine and get drunk.

I enjoy the feeling of productivity when I get rid of piles of things that I don’t need. So I feel good right now—clean, refreshed. But I also feel sad. Getting rid of books is sad. I know that the space we’ve freed up is now open for new and unread books, new books that may become favorites, but it’s still sad.

Still to come: the editing of the closet. I have many clothes to give away.

By the way, if you know you live in my city (trying to remain Googlenonymous here, so I won’t say where) and you want to peruse my to-be-given away books (or anything else, for that matter—we’re going to get rid of some furniture and other stuff, too), feel free to email me. I’d be happy to give away things to deserving strangers.