Worthy Cause Decreases Pseudo-Clutter

I'm doing some purging in our house. When I'm feeling this way (swamped by the massive amounts of stuff that invades and suffocates my life), I never do the obvious: the mail that gets piled haphazardly in the entry, the dishes lying on the kitchen counters, the random papers and items that seem to get deposited on the dining room table every time one of us enters the house (what is this stuff, and why do we feel the need to keep the receipt from the morning's coffee, then drop it on the table? Is it lonely? Does it need coffee receipt friends? There's enough there to start a fraternity of receipts, why do we have to bring more in?). Do I focus on the piles of clothes that need sorting, washing, ironing? NO!

I go after the books, which makes my husband very upset. He lectures me like I'm erasing all the learning of human civilization if I go near the bookshelf with a paper sack. And I can see his point: these are books, the equivalent of intellectual gold! They are a tangible display of our education, our interests, our beliefs, our personal growth.

But, hear me out. We have duplicates, people, from when we merged our collections together! (These, by the way, were the last thing we held onto as "single" people. We merged finances and debt before we merged book collections. But that's a whole different story.) And between the two of us (both English majors) we have a dozen short story anthologies ... ok, I just counted and it was 13!... all from our college days (many moons ago) and many of which have overlapping stories. I checked because Mr. Time was giving me that look and I needed some data to support my position.

This all may have something to do with a flyer I picked up at my local independent book store, announcing "A Book Drive for Women Behind Bars." I have never been behind bars, and hope never to be behind bars, but if I were ever to find myself behind bars, I hope I get some books. Thus, this is officially a Worthy Cause. Now, only to choose which of the 13 short story anthologies ...