De-cluttering

I've been on a de-cluttering mission since I closed the shop at the beginning of January.  When the last of the stock and all of the furniture was brought from the shop to my cottage I felt very overpowered by it all. 

So I've been selling furniture, clothing, and, of course, the last of the stock from the shop.

One of the big things I did, big for me anyway, was to give away some of my hundreds of books.  Not an easy thing to do as I love my books, but they were threatening to take over the cottage.  I had them all over the floor as I'd sold a couple of the low level bookshelves I had in the cottage before the shop closed.  The idea was to use the tall, better quality, bookshelves from the shop instead.  Unfortunately the removal man couldn't get the tall bookshelves in the cottage so they were dumped in the barn.  I need to take them apart to get them in the cottage but haven't got round to it yet.  Must put that on my urgent 'to do' list for March. 

Anyway, lack of shelving and books everywhere stirred me into activity and I sorted through them.  I was quite ruthless surprisingly.  Gone are two carrier bags of well read Terry Pratchett Discworld novels, which I kept thinking I would read again from the beginning, but realistically never would.  Gone are six carrier bags of modern paperback novels, and the same again of paperback classics.  I also got rid of two carrier bags of old philosophy books.  These were the hardest things to give away.   I've also been selling some of my text books on Amazon.  Some of the philosophy and literary theory books I had have turned out to be not so easy to get hold off and are worth a bit.  I raised about £100 in February from selling books.  Not many left to sell now but a bit of useful cash when I had no money at all coming in. 

I still have around 300 books in the living room.  These are mostly gardening, art and craft, poetry and a few others I couldn't bear to part with.   I just need to sort through the cupboard full of magazines now.