

Back in February I counted all the hardback books I owned and discovered it was a total of 130-ish books. It may not look like a large sum of books for many, but before I started book blogging, I hardly owned any books (at most, like, 3 books) as I grew up being a library user and could never justify owning books as I moved a lot when I lived alone. However, everything changed upon joining Bookstagram. I fell down the rabbit hole of thinking I needed to own hardcover books of everything. Because, how else could I post books on Bookstagram, a visual platform of social media? (This is another topic for later…) So to me, owning 3 books to 130-ish books is a lot. Not only am I running out of shelf-space, I’m also drowning in my TBR. Please help
After a year, I’ve accumulated over 100 books. Whilst I love owning books, I feel like it weighs me down in terms of space and clutter. I want to curate my space with books I love and would enjoy re-reading and sharing. If you haven’t already seen it, I’ve written a post on How to Declutter Books (it’s mainly a post calling out myself lol). Anyway, this post is to see my progress on how I am with decluttering my books. This post is to keep myself accountable and also, I love making figures and tables.
Now, without further ado… let’s see how much damage I’ve done!
Number of Hardback Books I own in 2021
Month | Books owned start of month | Books I bought | Books I decluttered | Total books at end of month |
January | 136 | + 2 | – 5 | 133 |
February | 133 | + 5 | – 4 | 134 |
March | 134 | + 5 | – 4 | 135 |
April | 135 | + 6 | – 2 | 143 |
May | 143 | + 4 | 0 | 147 |
June | 147 | + 3 | 0 | 150 |
July | 150 | + 9 | – 5 | 154 |
August | 154 | + 5* (pending) | pending lol | 159* |
Books owned at start of the year, January: 136.
Books owned at time of post (August): 159.
In January I did so well, decluttering 5 books and only purchasing 2! And then you see my rapid decline in decluttering books from May onwards. Obviously, I’m not doing that well because in the span of 8 months I have gained +23 books.
23 books!

But hey! I’m supporting authors, so yay! At least, that’s what I’m telling myself right now…

Although, in my defence, a major excuse factor that stops me from decluttering is the fact that I haven’t had time due to my city in lockdown for the past 2 months (woohoo, Sydney) and me being a HCW trying to confine my movement . And for August I’ve put aside a bunch of books I plan to declutter, which is about 8-9 books.
I don’t have a specific number of books I want to own, but I do want to be picky with what I own. Anyway, I’m glad to see my progress on this constant journey. Progress, not perfection!
PS. I didn’t count my books at the start of the year and had to do some MaTheMatiCS to figure this all out. So I’m very happy I managed to figure out the exact numbers! Hahaha… help. You wouldn’t believe that I was that kid who used to do advanced mathematics (secondary level) in primary school lmaooooo where are my braincells now???
Do you declutter your books?



Congratulations on the attemptd to declutter. I don’t declutter as such, I just give away the books I don’t enjoy to friends as they have a different taste to me.
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Thank you! And fair enough. I count giving away books as decluttering as the books are no longer in my possession. Love that 💞
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I started to declutter books after watching Marie Kondo. It was such a revelation to me that it’s ok to let go of books. Now I just keep the ones I really love
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Ahhh I’m going to need to start decluttering soon. I’m about to run out of shelf space 😅 Glad to see I’m not the only one who struggles with it.
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I have given up on my physical book pile, I just have so many and I do not know what to do with them. Perhaps I should have a massive clear out? But also I want to read them all 😭
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I just unhauled about 40 books! Like you, I dislike having too many books on my TBR, and after COVID began and I started buying more books, there were just too many unread books on my shelf! I was running out of room. My TBR is closer to 60 books now, while it was 40 at the beginning of the year. I’m just hoping that I can end the year with my TBR at 40 again somehow!
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