If I Was A Hoarder…
by Jenners • 09/08/2011 • Confessions, Mr. Jenners, Writers Workshop • 82 Comments
Link up every Thursday!
I haven’t done Writer’s Workshop in FOREVER so, with the start of school and the resumption of more regular blogging, I’m diving back in. This week, I’m going with Prompt 2: If you were a hoarder, based on your personality, what would you hoard? (better yet, ask someone who knows you well, what they think you would hoard).
If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, I’m pretty sure you know the answer to this question: BOOKS! In fact, Mr. Jenners would argue that I am already a book hoarder, though I beg to differ. A true book hoarder would NEVER be satisfied with one measly bookshelf, which is what the odious Mr. Jenners expects me to live with.
But a skilled book hoarder knows ways around the limits imposed by misguided and cruel wannabe feudal lords loved ones. For example, Mr. Jenners has no idea how many books I have on my Kindle or the amount of audiobooks on my iPod. (For me, the ability to hoard without taking up any space is one of the biggest pluses of an e-reader.) He is also not privy to the location of my secret stashes of books that aren’t out in plain view. (Clue: Look in the closets and the basement, Mr. J.)
The truth is, if left to my own devices, I would live in a house that resembled a bookstore. In fact, every dream house that I’ve ever imagined for myself had a room (or two or three) that looked a lot like this:
The rolling ladder is a must!!
If you're going to hoard, why not hoard in style?
Now I know that many of you reading this are already book hoarders collectors. In fact, some of you seem to be living in what should rightfully be MY house. I do not hold that against you too much. I know my day will come … specifically the day after the Little One moves out of the house and I transform his room into my library!
P.S. I would also hoard chocolate. But that goes without saying.
P.P.S. For the record, when I asked Mr. Jenners and the Little One what I would hoard, they both immediately said books. And, as predicted, Mr. Jenners said “You are already a book hoarder.”
I found my way over from Sandy’s blog, You’ve GOTTA read this, and I loved this post. My husband would agree with what I hoard, but I have become better…if that can be said because now my goal is to share the books I love. If I had the space I’d save more of my favorite books, but I don’t and I’ve started passing them to friends to share, or swapping, you know for MORE books.
I have a Kindle too!! More books!
Great post, loved it.
Good for you!! I’m always a big fan of someone who likes to share their books. I use Paperback Swap myself. It is easier to justify getting new books when I’m getting rid of old ones. And the Kindle is a GREAT tool for a book hoarder. Thanks for dropping by. I’ll be over to visit you soon!
This about sums it up for me: “For me, the ability to hoard without taking up any space is one of the biggest pluses of an e-reader.”
As a certified professional organizer (www.yourhomeeditor.com), I get it. I see this kind of rationalizing in my work every day. At least you have a valid argument.
Have you ever considered http://www.PaperBackSwap.com? It’s a great way to “trade” books with people so you don’t have to keep the ones you don’t love, and can get new books (well, almost-new) for nothing. Check it out.
You’re a professional organizer? For the longest time, that was my dream job. I researched it and everything. Now, based on the way my house looks, I’m sure no one would hire me!
And I do use Paperback Swap … how do you think I filled up my one bookshelf!! HAHA!
Yes, I’m a P.O., NAPO (National Assoc. of Professional Organizers) member and everything. It’s a fun job and seeing in people’s underwear drawers gives me scads of writing fodder.
I’m definitely a book hoarder too and wear that badge proudly. I tried giving away a lot of my library by donating several thousands (I am not kidding) to my local library. I thought I would simplify my life but boy was I wrong. I’ve just started collecting the books all over again! Ha!
Several thousand books?????? Yikes! You have a serious problem (that I wish I had!).
Ha… Oh, I *SO* understand you… I live in a 2 room apartment and books are on almost every surface (thankfully, not yet on the floor… but that’s only a matter of time.)
I once joked that when I die, I want to be cremated with my ashes placed into a Starbucks’ coffee can and the can should be placed in Barnes&Noble.
I’m still not much of e-book readers (even though I’ve got a ton of books on my iPod) – and thankfully the thing that stops me from getting buried alive beneath all the books at home is that I like English (American / British) authors and they are not as easy to get here, in Ukraine
*Cheers!*
I think the first official sign that you are a hoarder is when you start to pile your treasures on the floor! : )
I already have a library instead of a dining room so I’m right there with you! I have three shelves in there and could use at least three more. Then there are the shelves in our room and in Z’s room. Okay, we might already be book hoarders. But, coming from my mom’s house (which is an actual hoarder house), I’m still doing okay!
Well I’m TONS better than my parent’s house, which has bookshelves in EVERY room and literally has 1000s of books. I learned from the best. I love that you gave up your dining room for a library. Good move.
I do have a book buying problem, but I can’t be a hoarder if I also give some away, right? Strangely, I hoard boxes. If one comes in to the house it stays until I need it. Needless to say we have a growing assortment of sizes and colors in the basement.
Well, you can solve both problems by being one of those “Book Boxers” on Paperback Swap!
That second bookshelf is dreamy! *sigh* I’d love to hoard chocolates too…lol.
As everyone pointed out, chocolates are difficult to hoard because they keep mysteriously disappearing.
Ah Jen, you are a girl after my own heart.
Books, chocolate, sounds like a reader’s dream. Oh, I want a fireplace and a big dog too.
Yes … a fireplace and a dog and life is complete.
I love that Mr. Jenners said exactly what you said he would said. My husband currently has 2 bookshelves to my 3 (plus a few small ones I don’t count), but he has decided he only wants to own one shelf’s worth of (double stacked) books and is trying to cut down on his collection. I, on the other hand, seem to have books that breed like rabbits and have secret plans to STEAL his second bookshelf just as soon as it is empty. Book hoarders…um, I mean COLLECTORS, unite!
I love your plan to annex his bookshelf for your own! Brilliant move!
I tend to spend a LOT of time in IKEA enjoying their bookshelves. I love books.
I think this is why we have no money.
Oh Ikea …. how I love it. We swore when we got our current house we’d do “real” furniture but 75% of it is Ikea. Just so hard to quit it.
What a timely post as I just bought an embarrassing number of books from the Borders closing sale. I have no clue where I’m going to possibly keep them all. But I’m not at the hoarding stage yet
I dream of having a library at some point in the future though!
I”m curious …. what is an “embarrassing” number of books? : ) HAHA! Keep on going and you’ll have a library one day.
I’ve been trying to buy more bookcases for the past month, but World Market is out of the ones I want. Damn you World Market!! I figure since I’ve been so nice to HB for the past 2 months, I should take advantage of all the brownie points I’ve accumulated and fill up the walls.
Oh yes …. strike while the iron is hot and fill your house with as many books as you can … if World Market would just get off their butts and get you your bookshelves.
I would hoard books as well. And I always said I wanted a really nice library. I like the stylish one you posted. I actually like them both. I suppose I could have both one on each side of the wall. What a dream that would be. I would also hoard shoes, all heels . And lovely hats and purses. Purses I can stash books in would be even better.
How about purses that look like shoes that contain books? : )
Although I have considerably more than one book shelf (see http://www.kittlingbooks.com/2011/08/scene-of-blog-featuring-debbie-of.html), I think that library wall with the rolling ladder is to DIE for!
Ooohhh…I need to see your “considerably more than one book shelf.” Sounds like heaven …even if you don’t have a rolling ladder (yet).
As much as I love reading, I do not hoard books. The only ones I keep, are ones that changed me in some way (A Separate Peace, East of Eden, The Fountainhead). I give all the others to friends.
If you asked my family what I hoard ,they would say perfume. I have a lot of “vintage” perfumes from the 80s. I don’t wear them on a regular basis and I have been known to drive people nuts trying to find my signature scent, but yeah…I have a lot of perfumes.
Because of Mr. Jenners rules, I don’t keep too many books after I read them unless they are particularly special.
And I’m intrigued by your “hoarding” of “vintage 1980s” perfume. I guess it is the scents and not the bottles? Have you found your signature scent yet? If so, what is it? I kind of wish you’d write a post about it actually!
Those floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with the ladder are beautiful! I’m trying to convince my husband to build a wall of bookshelves in our living room. We have this huge wall and don’t know what to do with it – fill it up with books, I say. I have a big problem hoarding books, too. I have so many stacks, here and there. It actually stresses me out. I wish I could find a place to organize them once and for all.
I think your solution to your huge wall is perfect!! I would lobby hard for it. Make the case that your stacks all over the house would be consolidated and organized finally.
Hah!! I totally sympathize. Bibliophilia is a condition I suffer, too. Loved the wall displays. (Most of my books are in boxes. It’s like having your arm in a cast.) The chocolate is something I definitely hoard. Senor sticks his in the freezer. Ick. I just can’t wrap my head around the merit of frozen chocolate.
Oh dear … I”m distressed by your books being in boxes! How can you visit them and rearrange them by height or color or browse around for your next read???? Now I do put “lesser” chocolate (Hershey’s With Almonds) in the fridge to “stiffen” it up but not the freezer. That doesn’t sound right to me.
“Hoarder” is kind of an ugly word for someone who likes to decorate with books.
Wonderfully said! I’m a book decorator … not a hoarder.
Your dream library with the rolling ladder is also my dream room. Oh, and is it really possible to hoard chocolate? I think just as I would start loading it up for stacking….it would make its way to my mouth….
Everyone is making a very good case that it isn’t possible to hoard chocolate due to it being eaten too quickly. I guess I was thinking that if there was some kind of food shortage, I would pick chocolate over meat or bread or … anything!
OMG this is pee your pants stuff right here. You were a topic of conversation between Heather/Zibilee and Heather/Book Addiciton and I last night at book club. “If I were a book hoarder…doo bee doo bee doo bee doo bee dee bee dee bee dum!” Mr. Jenners? Odious? Feudal lord? LOL My husband has no earthly clue about my books. Once the stacks get two and three books deep, it all blends in.
Too funny that you were singing the “Book Hoarder” tune. We should get Jill at Fizzy Thoughts to write us some lyrics for it!!!!!
And I’m intrigued and impressed by your “hide books behind other books” technique. I need to get a deeper bookshelf to pull that off! Thanks for the genius tip!
This post could have been written about me too. I love books – and can now hoard even more without them being visible or taking up any shelf space thanks to my Kindle!
The Kindle is a great enabler for book hoarders! Now if we end up with 100 different Kindles because they are all full up, then we have a problem.
You can hoard chocolate? I can’t seem to hoard mine, it goes too quick!
I just had to get rid of a TON of books, it broke my heart, but I managed to keep my favorites….what? it’s only like 100 or so, I thought that was pretty good. I gave like 5 to the used book store! =)
Well, I suppose you could hoard chocolate. After all, if you bought 100 pounds of chocolate on sale, you coudn’t eat all that in a single day. You’d have to spread it out over 100 days or so!
And when I do have to give away books (and I do … because Mr. Jenners limits my space) I feel better if they go to a good home or I get another book in exchange. That is why I do my giveaways and joined Paperback Swap.
Love all these beautiful places to store books….gorgeous!
If I was a hoarder, I would hoard: books, pocketbooks, and shoes –oh wait, I already do that…LOL
Funny that you mention pocketbooks, I have been on a quest for the perfect pocketbook for years now and it drives Mr. Jenners crazy. I don’t mean to hoard them but I get one that I think is good and then it turns out it isn’t exactly what I want or need (at the time). I’ve been cut off though. The last one I bought I had to swear that it was the last one. He can’t make me do that with books though.
that Hoarder show get me so upset…but the only thing I would ever hoard is books. Maybe it would just be easier to live in a bookstore…
those bookshelves make me all happy inside.
Wouldn’t it be great to rent a small room at a bookstore? The room could have a cozy chair and a bed and bathroom and as part of your rent, you get to read any book in the store.
I would (and sort of do) hoard scrapbook supplies
The fact that you have an entire craft room devoted to scrapbooking makes that very obvious. At least you hoard in style!
I think we hoard the same thing. We have books in every room including the bathroom.
We always have books in the bathroom too!!! I call them my “bathroom” books and they are specifically chosen for “short form easy reads” during visits … though sometimes they cause me to spend a longer time in there than I should.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with hoarding books!
They hold knowledge and smell wonderful!
what?
Well, most of them smell wonderful. Some of the older ones have a smell that you either love or you hate!!
I LOVE this…This is what I wrote about too! It is so nice to see others who love actual books as much as myself!! Here I was afraid books would one day be a thing of the past…well they might be and we will be this rare breed of people just wondering about our libraries because people will be begging us to take their books.
You are NOT ALONE in your love of books! I don’t think books will disappear any time soon, but I have to admit that I’m a fan of the e-reader for portability and not having to break my wrists to read books that are over 500 pages. So glad to meet another fellow reader.
In my opinion books are a much better thing to hoard than cats :/ I have also found that the e-reader is a great place to hoard books.
E-readers are the perfect way to hoard books without anyone being aware of what is going on. And yes … better to hoard books than cats!
Have him watch the Hoarders show. My husband and I watched something about hoarders and I was able to clear up that misconception that I hoard books. It’s so nice to be able to say, “See, I’m nothing like that – no dead animals in the corner or anything!”
The fact that I have books hiding in every nook and cranny of the bedroom is beside the point. I figure if they’re not visible to the public then they don’t count against my allowed book space.
I love that you used the actual TV show to prove your non-hoarderishness. “I’m not a hoarder … there are no dead animals about.”
And just like calories don’t count if a cookie is broken, books don’t count if they aren’t visible.
Ok, when I first saw the title of this post, I immediately set it to the tune of If I Was a Rich Man from Fiddler on the Roof. But that is neither here nor there. I am, in fact, a book hoarder, and I employ lots of devious techniques that are not fooling anyone, really. It’s a real source of tension with the husband, and even the kids think it’s a little ridiculous. I have gotten better, and gotten a lot of books on the Kindle, but I can’t see any world in which I stop collecting books. Even thinking about it makes me get all wiggly.
I didn’t think of that tune when I first wrote the post but did think of it later when I was proofing it. So funny you did too!!
Good for you for coming clean about your book hoarding … though bad about the tension. My husband gives me grief all the time (“you won’t NEED any more books”) and it makes me mad. He doesn’t get why you need to have many many books at all times.
I love how you would feel “wiggly” if you couldn’t collect books. That is a good description.
Of course we knew it would be books. Isn’t it nice that we’re all so predictable? I bet you would like the shelves I had put in my LR when we built our house. I just didn’t have the foresight to put them on all FOUR sides of the room instead of just one! I would take a photo, but I’d be embarassed for you to see how I have them double (and triple) stacked in the shelves.
Back in the day I was guilty of collecting (hoarding??) record albums, too. Still have them all.
I always WANT to be unpredictable but I’m just not.
I’d LOVE to see photos of your bookshelves — even if they are double and triple stacked.
And I have no doubt about you being a record album hoarder based on what I’ve seen of your immense iPod music collection.
I bought a freezer 2 years ago so I could hoard on-sale ice cream. A wonderful investment!
That is genius!! Genius I tell you. And you do know that the “house that I think should be rightfully mine” mentioned in my post was a link to your bookshelf post, right?
I totally missed the link to my shelves! I was so absorbed in thinking about the ice cream…
Oh, reading this made me think immediately of my sister. She’s always been an avid reader and loves books!
Thanks for stopping by my blog today and leaving a comment! Glad to “meet” you!
Glad to meet you too … and thanks for visit.
I think that hoarding chocolate works well in theory, less so in practice.
I also said I’d hoard books. We too have only one bookcase, but The Mister already had it half filled when I arrived here.
My post has a link for bookshelf porn – you really need to check out the site!
You make a good point about the chocolate hoarding. How can you hoard something that you eat almost as soon as you get it. And I loooooved your bookshelf porn!
I totally agree. You are a book hoarder
If you could build your own home, I can totally see you putting in a library before you even added the kitchen. Who needs to go the library when we can just visit you, right?
I would get so much more use out of a library than a kitchen!!!!! A kitchen is not a big priority for me … that is true. And how great would it be to have my own personal library that I could “open” to the (discriminating) public?
Good to see the writers workshop back. Of course, it goes without saying I also hoard books but I confess I also like to hoard pens – why I don’t know. As for the hoarding of chocolate …… it gets eaten before I can begin to even to think of hoarding it.
You make a good point about the chocolate. How can you hoard something that vanishes so quickly? And we have a lot of pens around now that I think about it…
I would love to have a library in my house! Or at least just some decent shelves. Right now most of my books are on some ratty old bookshelves in the garage but I do get to pass by them every time I come in the house.
Isn’t just seeing books enough to make you happy and feel secure. My worst nightmare is not having anything to read.
Oh, I am so with you!! Delightful post Jenners, and gorgeous pics, I salivated
My bookshelves are overflowing, and I have resorted to splitting up little piles of books around the house. They are a pain for dusting.
A bit of bookshelf porn, isn’t it? A few others posted about the same thing and there was a link to some other bookshelves that I was just gaga over. I envy your overflowing books.
My younger daughter and I fantasize about a house with a library like the ones you picture and yes, the rolling ladder is a must-have. We would also want a huge globe on a stand, a fireplace and a game table. *sigh* guess I better buy a few more lottery tickets.
OK…I’m adding your globe, fireplace and game table to my dream library room too. And a table that is just for puzzles that can stay there and be worked on when the mood hits!
Better buy my lottery tickets too.