It’s all about the books these days, folks.

We have three, six-foot bookshelves in one room; my short-term goal is to get rid of at least one of these bookshelves. I didn’t think I would accomplish that goal today, but I’m making steady progress. Meanwhile, I continue to pluck books off of other bookshelves around the house as well–some I’m adding to the going-to-read-in-the-next-year stack, and some go into other stacks destined to be dropped off at friends’ houses, commons areas at work, and various donation centers.

As I was looking at one particular stack of hardbacks in fairly good condition, I found myself wondering: what if I were to convert some of these give-aways into credit at our local used book store?

I know that sounds a bit counter-intuitive at first–why add to a book collection that I am struggling to thin out? But my thinking is this: if I can use a book swap as a motivation to let go of more of the books that I’m holding onto for no good reason, then I am absolutely ahead of the game.

So today, I loaded up a bag with a dozen or so books and headed down to the used bookstore. About half of them the bookstore passed on, so those went off to the donation stack. The other six or seven books I converted into two new additions to the small stack of books I plan to read during our first year in North Carolina.

Tomorrow is going to be a challenge–after the kids get out of school and I get home from work, the plan is to load up the van with bags of winter clothes, books destined for my new office, plus one small bookshelf and a stack of read-worthy books, and then hit the road.

Wow. Just writing that list of tasks has me exhausted. I guess I better get some sleep!