In Case of Zombie Apocalypse, Break the Glass

It probably says a lot about us that our oldest son once asked if we could loot the library if civilization ever collapses. Our response? Duh. Of course we said yes. Our second son reminded us that we'd also want to loot for more guns and ammo.

We have our priorities lined up. We love books. (And guns, but this post is about books.) Oldest son and I counted our books about six years ago, just out of curiosity. We had counted more than twelve hundred before we decided we didn't need an exact number.

Today, though, has been a day for downsizing the home library. "Downsizing" is our theme and motto, almost our raison d'etre, during Project: Moving Home. Now, if you're a book lover, this isn't really as bad as it sounds. We have three Kindles in our home so far. Since the arrival of the first one a couple of years ago when they were still ridiculously priced (Ernie's cheap, but I'm persistent), our physical library has been slowly shrinking. In some cases, I replaced a book immediately with the Kindle edition. In other cases, just knowing that the book was available for Kindle was good enough.

I took that attitude and kicked it up a notch today. Eight Nine boxes of books are destined for the never ending library sale. The first box was a little difficult, but gradually, I got into the swing of things. Now, at the end of the day, books that I wouldn't have considered getting rid of this morning are sitting in boxes, and I've only replaced a few of them with Kindle editions. (And Ernie told me to stop that and just make a list, for crying out loud, since we're conserving money for the move. Sometimes, he's a real pain to live with.)

Sometimes, we hold onto possessions out of habit. It's good to periodically remind ourselves that we can live with far fewer.

And the Kindle is one of the better possessions out there.