My Plan to 'Spring Clean' the Bookshelves

Happy St. Patrick's Day! After some green beer, I've decided to launch my spring agenda, which requires that I tackle two tough topics: spring cleaning and getting rid of books. Even though I buy fewer hardcover or paperback books now that e-books are inexpensive, more convenient for traveling and reference, and create no storage headaches, I still do buy bound books simply because there is nothing more pleasurable to me than sitting quietly and turning pages, lost in a story. But then I end up with cluttered, dusty bookcases and no space for my new favorites because out-of-date texts and raggedy paperbacks are hogging limited shelf space. So after reading advice columns about how to best tidy my bookshelves, here is my spring-cleaning plan: No. 1, I take all the books off the shelves, and clean and fix the shelves. No. 2, I initially divide the books into piles of "must keep" and "could go." (I steel myself to resist reading the books while making my decisions, or I'll never finish the task.) How do I decide which books to let go? I decide to cart away books that I have read but don't like, that I have read but know I will never read again, or that I haven't read but know I will never read. No. 3, I further divide the "could go" pile into four piles of books to "sell," "donate," "return to owner/lender," or "trash." Some folks suggest turning the trash books into craft projects (such as paper flowers from the pages), but I'll leave that to someone more artful. No. 4, I take the books that I'm going to keep and clean them up (maybe repair a few), and then rearrange them by some scheme that makes sense while remaining visually appealing (author, size, genre, etc.). No. 5, I follow through on selling, donating and trashing, so that piles of unwanted books don't end up in the garage as homes for spiders. No. 6, I reward myself with a quiet read of a new book, or one of the old favorites I found while cleaning. I do empathize with any readers determined to cling to book-jammed spaces, however, and so I'll also pass along these memes about bookworms who hate spring cleaning: https://media.bookbub.com/blog/2017/03/15/reading-over-spring-cleaning-memes/