Finally, you have reached the age when you are beginning to think about downsizing. Perhaps you have familiarised yourself with all the practical and even emotional difficulties involved and have decided you are not quite ready to take the plunge.

Is there anything you can do in preparation for the eventual day?

Downsizing Dilemma: Culling Books

Few people reach their 60s without accumulating a lot of things they know they could throw or give away without great loss.

There are the clothes that don’t quite fit, but might do so if you lost those extra pounds that you are working on. There are the gifts that you never use, but have sentimental value because of the friends who gave them to you.

And then there are the books.

Books Take Room

If you like to read, you probably have books all over your house or apartment. Perhaps you sorted through them 10 years ago (or longer) because you had moved then or simply had a fit of eagerness to clean up.

In any case, there they are, in piles here and there – in the living room, by your bedside, in odd corners, including some in the bathroom.

Whatever cataloguing system once existed has probably long lost any cogency. When you are looking for a book you know you own, you get annoyed because it is nowhere to be found.

You have long thought that books don’t take any space, but you know you are kidding yourself. Indeed, for years, you proudly collected books to make your home feel properly lived in and loved. Each addition was like another brick to a house.

Perhaps it is time to cull.

Culling Can Be Painful

Deciding to get rid of books is harder than you might think. There are the books you always meant to read and are sure you will get to one day. There are those you started, but then stopped, and you like to think you will indeed finish them.

There are some you may be keeping for the children or for when you are sick and need something not too demanding. There are a lot of reasons to keep books.

And, if you are anything like me, it is a dusty job. You keep the house generally clean, but how often do you pull out the books one by one? So not only is it an emotionally difficult business to decide to give away books, but it is also a physically unpleasant one. Every reason not to do it.

But go for it, nonetheless.

How to Start Downsizing Your Book Collection

It is possible, of course, to simply go to any shelf and pull out books you don’t really want any more. I would urge you to do it more systematically.

If you have a lot of books, mentally divide them into categories – perhaps something simple like fiction versus non-fiction, but you might have more elaborate sub-categories.

Start with just one. Search your house for all novels, say, and put them in one place. Then, to feel productive, put them in alphabetical order (and remove any duplicates of books you bought a second time, because you forgot you had them in the first place!).

Then begins the difficult part. You know how old you are, and you know how many books you tend to read in a year. You can guess that however good your intentions, there are a set of books you will never re-read or read for the first time. Put them in a separate pile. Then look again and find some more.

Continue in the same vein with other categories. Depending on the size of your collection, this may take a few days. You should find yourself with a few cartons of books at the end of the process.

Dust the shelves, and put the books back in some organised system that pleases you. Offer the discarded books to friends, family, charity shops or even to passers-by. There, you have done it.

The Gains

Believe me, there are gains. In the first place, your rooms immediately look cleaner and tidier. With luck, there are no books piled on the floor, and you may even gain space for that knick-knack you were wondering where to put. Also, you know where your books are, next time you are looking.

Best of all, you will have found many books you didn’t have any memory of buying, but would really like to read – or re-read. My high school English teacher used to say, “If a book is worth reading once, it is worth reading twice.”

Put them on your bedside in an inviting pile. Take one out and pour yourself a glass of wine.

Time well spent.

This post was first published by Sixty and Me (http://sixtyandme.com/downsizing-dilemma-why-getting-rid-of-books-is-so-tough/) and should not be re-blogged

There is something about finding ourselves in our 60s that makes our heads turn to the past, in general, and, more specifically, to our ancestry. I have no idea why this fascination comes so forcefully at this time.

Perhaps as we age, our perception of time changes. The decades before we were born seem less long ago. Our ancestors therefore seem more real and present.

Searching Your Family History Seriously

There are some people who take genealogy very seriously. They sign up to all sorts of websites and check records going well into the past. This is a great pastime.

Depending on the size of your family, it can keep you busy for months and even years. You will doubtless learn a lot of interesting things.

The Accidental Route

Some of us learn about our ancestry by somewhat more accidental – or, indeed, lazy – means. Perhaps someone else in your family is pursuing such information, so that you can benefit without all the work. It is worth asking older members of your extended family to see what they might have found.

In my case, it turned out that a surprising number of my forbearers were keen on memoir-writing. So, various documents have turned up within the family from different periods, even in different languages.

To add to the fun, these are not always consistent in their description of the same events. The truth, as any historian would confirm, is difficult to establish.

You have to wonder what you would like to find. Someone famous? A connection to royalty? A murderer? We are all different in our wishes and in the ways in which we would respond.

Odd Pieces of Information

My parents were highly respectable, so my ancestors might be expected to be respectable, too – and many of them were. The problem is that they are invariably the least interesting to read about.

I have nonetheless come upon some relatives of more doubtful qualities. One distant ancestor was an explorer in the South Seas in the late nineteenth century. He was evidently selling tobacco on the side.

When he came upon one group of islanders who didn’t know what to do with this product, he set up smoking classes, thereby securing a demand for his regular return.

I should not be proud of this ancestor, but I must admit that I admire his ingenuity. And he wasn’t to know about the link with cancer, after all.

Family Ups and Downs

A much closer relative (my great-grandfather) was involved as a young man in import-export dealings on the Mexican-US border. From family memoirs and other sources, it is clear that this was not genteel territory.

Evidently, there were some careful judgements about the declaration of silver at the border. As the proceeds of import taxes were said to end up in the pockets of those collecting them, the moral issue could be said to be unclear. In any case, he ended up a very rich man.

As history often shows, the money was completely lost by his son, my grandfather, in a series of ill-judged enterprises – to his permanent shame. He ended up as a door-to-door salesman in the 1920s and ’30s.

The Significance of It All

Once you have considered your ancestors, you wonder what to do with the information. Does it help you to understand yourself better? I am not so sure. But you do end up feeling like one link in an inexorable chain – and wonder even harder where your grandchildren and their descendants will take it.

When my son was a small child of just five or six, he heard about the concept of infinity. Like many children, he was fascinated by it. He also began to realise that there were generations within families, with some coming before, like his grandparents, and some after.

One morning, he put the two thoughts together. “You know, Mum,” he said, “the people coming before us were not infinity, but the people coming after us are infinity.” His English wasn’t up to the task of expressing his thought, but the thought itself was profound, indeed.

This post was first published by Sixty and Me (http://sixtyandme.com/are-you-curious-about-your-family-history-heres-how-to-start-researching/) and should not be re-blogged