How many books do you own?

[Claire]

Having finally gotten around to getting rid of books we don't use anymore, I am absolutely appalled at how many books we own! Am I the only one?

[sdWTMer]

We have a ton of books! I usually buy books instead of getting them from the library. I do buy a lot of used books though!

[Mrs Mungo]

I have 12 bookshelves in my house and most of the paperback shelves are stacked two deep. I think I counted 55 *big* boxes of books when we moved but there might have been more.

[Canada_Mom]

Not enough. I'll never have enough books. :p I do have to admit that I read everything I buy though. That's justification to buy more, isn't it? If I had to add everything up, including kids, I'd say about 500. But board books add up quickly... and most of these were purchased at garage sales for dirt cheap.

[freethinkermom]

We recently did a major clean out. I had far too many books purchased at library sales that "might" be useful for homeschool work someday. They all went. They were all musty smelling and made us sick to use.At the same time we weeded out a lot of other books that we felt were not worth keeping. Not every book is worth a reread :)

I let the kids sell whater the store would take to a used book store for credit that they can use.

We still have a ton of books. I want new bookshelves for the hallway, which will lead to having even more books.

[WTMCassandra]

I have 12-14 full-size bookshelves in my home. And I do go through my books regularly, but we have LOTS. I think we had 55-60 book boxes when we moved in Fall 2006.

[Sandy in Indy]

I'm guessing we have between 500-1000. I'd hate to stop and really figure it out. Not only do I have all the books that I've collected, but I have most of my mil's collection that came with the house. I'm trying to thin them all out... I did find a jewel up on mil's shelf this summer--a copy of A Child's History of the World.

[angela in ohio]

I checked "You don't want to know," because I know it is over 1000. :D

[Rhonda@LivingWater]

I know I own more that I can count! :o

[King Alfred Academy]

Our friends are tired of helping us move all the time because of all the boxes of books they have to carry! I am a firm believer in "you can never have too many books"! Wish I had more!:)

[Baseballmom]

Three years ago we counted about 1200 books. I have sold some, but I have purchased a lot more. Maybe that would be a good job for the kids when they are bored...counting the books.

[Karenciavo]

I am absolutely appalled at how many books we own! Am I the only one?

I'm not appalled. My movers were though. http://www.smilies.our-local.co.uk/index_files/read.gif

[Jenny in Atl]

Last count, thanks to Library Thing, we have 2,188 (that includes audio bks~ 30-40). The number was higher but I have started selling some of the picture bks and SL chapter bks as my younger daughter finishes them. I need more $ to buy new bks! :eek:

[SFP]

According to LibraryThing, 2,398.

[RoughCollie]

We own about 6,000 personal books and 45,000 in our store.

Way too many books, IMO, but we have 2 major book packrats in our house. The store started out being a way to sell some of our personal book collection and my husband grew the business by accident -- he just couldn't help himself for some inexplicable reason.

I have extolled the virtues of e-book readers, but the book-rats hate the idea, of course. We live in a library -- no place for art because bookcases fill so many wall surfaces and diminish the floor space available for furniture.

[Colleen]

I'm one who prefers not to collect too many books. I like to have some in my home, but a bunch of full bookshelves would make me feel claustrophobic and cluttered. At the library, yes; in my home, no. Having said that, there of course some that I do own and together with our Sonlight cores I suppose the numbers add up.

[Peek a Boo]

There was literally A. Ton. of difference. I think dh about fainted when he heard that: "I always tell the guys at work that you had a ton of books, but i didn't think i was being literal!"

I counted how many books went into each box as we packed. All told I had almost 3,000. I have bought lots more since then. I'd bet we have at least 5,000. My house is a homeschool library tho --i am constantly lending out stuff to others. Library fines kill me!! Triple digits is just stupid!! I get my books at the thrift stores and library sales too. I can count on one hand the number of non-text books that I have paid retail for.

i just secured a 2-column shelf to the wall yesterday. I'm waiting for dh to get around to building me more shelves, lol. you can see a pic of my biggest wall to wall, floor to ceiling shelf at the introductions thread--it was full in 30 minutes.

http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1182&highlight=intro

[Janice in NJ]

I finally purchased a very inexpensive software program to keep track of them. (Bookpedia - LOVE IT!!!!!)

I voted, but let's just say that your categories don't go nearly high enough. :D

WE LOVE BOOKS! :D

Peace,
Janice

Enjoy your little people
Enjoy your journey...and your books!

[KarenNC]

Roughly 3500-4000 of books between my husband and me (he tried to catalogue them at one point :)), then another 500+ of my daughter's books, at least at last count. We do periodically weed through and take load upon load to the local used bookstores. We are trying to be more selective in what we bring in, however, as we are trying to pare down our possessions a bit. As it is, we are definitely finding out about the R-value of books, as most of our walls are lined with bookshelves :).

[Sebastian (a lady)]

I'm not appalled. My movers were though.

We have 31 bookcases, with an estimated 3000-5000 books. We have had moves with well over 150 boxes of books.

Our last move, the inspector was retired from the Air Force property office (ie, his military profession was also doing moves). He said we had more books than he'd ever seen in his career.

[Philothea]

Definately over 1000, though I have never counted.

It goes to show how different my own home is from the home I grew up in. We definately had less than 50 books in our home, and those were either cookboooks or car repair manuals.

My parents find our book collection appaling, stupid and unecessary.

[theodwyn]

We probably have about 17 or 18 bookshelves.
We own over 2000 I think.

[Sharon in SC]

With our move and after weeding out ALOT, we ended up with about 65 copy paper sized boxes. :-} Of course, that doesn't count the HUGE rubbermaid container I ran across this week still at the old house with books of dh's!

[Sharon H in IL]

I've become more selective in my purchasing over the years, and more ready to abandon the less-than-fantastic.

Can I still be a WTM boardie?

[LaMere Academy]

waaaay more than 1,000

[HomeOnTheRanch]

Just 2...

Ohhhhh...you mean THAT kind of books ;)

Do I count the 15-20 year old college texts in the boxes in the garage? I'm sure they're still useful (NOT...I was a computer science major). I really have no clue. Bookshelves are in every room and several boxes are in the garage. I'd estimate 3-4k.

[KidsHappen]

Do you have them cataloged? Can you find the one you are looking for when you need it? Do carry a special insurance rider on them? Could you replace all of them if you lost them?

Just curious.

[RoughCollie]

We have 6000 books here. They are not catalogued. I take pictures of the bookcases every few years for insurance purposes, but a special rider is not required.

I can find all my personal books because I only own the ones I definitely want to keep, maybe 100 books. If my book packrats want to find a certain book, it takes them quite awhile. Too bad.

If we lost them, I would not care. I read a lot (4-5 books a week) and I love books, but I look at all this as clutter. I get books from the library, buy them and pass them on, or buy them and throw them away (no point in passing on a poorly written or boring book). I rarely read the same book twice.

My book rats would probably have heart failure if they lost their books. My husband owns about 4,000 of them and he would recall the vast majority of the titles and order replacement copies pronto.

Those books take up a lot of space. When we retire, I told my husband I wanted to get a small Cape Cod house with 3 bedrooms to be used as master, guest room and study. he said we can't because there would not be enough room for his books. After God, me, and the kids, he loves his books. he actually worries about what will happen to his books if he dies before me. Like they are people, for goodness sake!

Do you have them cataloged? Can you find the one you are looking for when you need it? Do carry a special insurance rider on them? Could you replace all of them if you lost them?

Just curious.

[Tammy in Germany]

I just unloaded 150 books in the past 2 weeks. Boy my shelves look so much better.

[Hannah]

We're going to be moving to England in the next couple of months, so I'm having to get rid of most of the estimated 3000 books that we own - I will no longer have 'but the library system is terrible' as an excuse!
It's a painful process as most of the books were bought second hand over the last 10 years and I absolutely love the thrill of a good 2nd hand book find.

[Andie]

I checked "You don't want to know," because I know it is over 1000. :D

Ditto! I've been trying to keep the kids' books listed in librarything. So far they have over 1200, not counting a few unpacked boxes that I've not yet added. I have probably about the same number. And then there are the school books...

[mellifera]

Dh says he wants as many books as Thomas Jefferson.:)

[PariSarah]

. . . so I put 500-1000. We've got about 500 down here in the living areas, for sure.

[KH_]

I use Library Thing, too (what a great resource! it's kept me from buying more than one copy more than once :D), and we currently have over 1200 books. I just ordered a bunch more for school next year and some general reading ones.

[Eliana]

I have most of the family books cataloged (over 5000 books), but I don't have the kids' individual collections cataloged yet...

Where do we keep them? When we lived in smaller houses, they were wherever we could fit a bookshelf - and books were often two rows deep.

They are roughly sorted - the kids' history/geography books have one large floor-to-ceiling shelf, their science books are on another, chapter books fill several, picture books another, and so on.

If I want to find a children's book - I look it up in our catalog, in case there is a picture of the cover, and give the info to one of the older kids and s/he usually finds it right away.

Everything else is pretty easy to find - I know what shelf to look on and I know what they look like...

They are covered under our homeowner's insurance... and since they are cataloged, the in-print ones can be easily replaced, the oop ones would take more effort. There are, perhaps, a handful of books I wouldn't care if we replaced, but most of them are ones we own because they add value to our lives, and replacing them would be a high priority (a higher one than replacing a lot of our furniture...)

I *love* having shelves full of books everywhere... it makes me feel so *rich*... a house full of wonderful books says 'abundance' to me... to be able to look up a poem, reread a classic (or a beloved piece of fluff), research a topic, find an experiment, identity a bird or flower... these are important parts of the life I want, for myself and my kids (dh is very much on the same page!). This is how I grew up, and I know how it enriched my life...

So, no, I am not appalled, I am delighted! :) But if they weren't all books I valued, then I'd be right with you... I hate having unnecessary things cluttering up our lives. (I am definitely not a knick-knacks kind of person, at least not in my own home.)

[Gailmegan]

I'm guessing that I have around 3000. They are not catalogued, but they are arranged. Fiction A-Z by author, and nonfiction by topic -24 shelves in our school room/library (some 2-deep). The boys have 8 shelves of kids fiction in their rooms. Then there are boxes of overflow in the basement including old textbooks.

[pianoplayer]

Quite frankly, I don't even want to know how many books we have, and I'm too busy to count them. I suspect that we have several thousand. We have huge floor-to-ceiling bookcases in our living room, den, and study, and, in addition, each of us have our own collections in our bedrooms. With a family of bookworms, what can I say? http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/images/icons/icon10.gif

As several have already said, we frequently have books double-stacked. We also seem to keep books for which we have no bookcase space at all, and that fact never seems to change no matter how many bookcases we buy. Compounding this is that we tend to buy hardback books for books we want to keep. I suppose I really ought to take some pictures for insurance purposes! (Thanks for the suggestion!)

If we ever have to move, I'm in big trouble! :lol:

[ArwenA]

Over 2,000!!! I'm sure I could get rid of some but I really don't want to.

[Beth in Central TX]

I have almost 1,500 books in my Book Collectorz database; however, over 1,000 was not an option on your poll. I have more books than this floating around our house, but I didn't count the toddler board books or many of the early readers. As my youngest gets passed these books, I will hopefully start weeding them out; we need the space.

[Diana in OR]

I don't have nearly as many books as I used to. I keep the ones that are irreplaceable, that we use for reference or entertainment, and our current school books. That's pretty much it.

With the advent of the Internet(and the ocassional trip to Powell's), I can find pretty much any book I'm looking for if necessary.

I've tried to go to a "less is more" philosophy in every area of my life.

I do love books. I just like it when they are kept at an off-site storage facility, aka the Public Library.:)

[6packofun]

I have been slowly collecting classics (adult and children's) so that my children will have our home library at their disposal whenever they need it for college or homeschooling their own kids. :) Maybe this will be an incentive to NOT move so far away when they're on their own? Maybe??? LOL

[Once]

I couldn't count but I know it is alot. DH and I joke that in our house the bathroom is the only room in the house without books. Some families *only* have books in the bathroom. :001_huh:

We have 12 bookshelves although some are not full. Hmmm. Maybe I'll fill them for next school year!!!

[Josie]

Ummm, last move I had 132 book boxes. I know we are over 2,000, but I haven't coundted for a while.

[Margaret in CO]

3661 at the last count, but I know I've missed some in the cataloging. Where are they? Well, there are two full walls of bookshelves in the back porch bedroom, two shelves in the living room, two shelves in the big bedroom, two shelves in the sewing room, four shelves in the room at the top of the stairs, one shelf in ds's room, two shelves in the computer room, one shelf in the big bedroom upstairs, and random other piles all over the place.When I say "shelf", I mean floor to ceiling type of shelves. We were just discussing the other day where we cold put another shelf in ds's bedroom. :D

[Carol in Cal.]

Everywhere.

I regard bookshelves as similar to thick wallpaper--they should ideally be on most walls. Walls without them are less rich, more bare.

Books are not clutter unless they are piled on the floor in 2 layers. By definition, a single layer is not clutter. It is simply a book management and access system. 2 layers is clutter, because you cannot see all of the titles in the back pile without moving the front pile.

A vase taking up space in a bookshelf is a waste of valuable book space, and a travesty. Vases belong on tables. BTW, a bed table or side table is just a book pile holder in disguise. Vases belong on dining room tables or kitchen tables only.

Cartons of books do not count as clutter.

Neither do library books.

And, no, I do not have issues. Nope. Not me. (Not I!)

[nmoira]

We have at least 1400 children's books, not counting picture books. I haven't started to seriously put dh's and my books into LibraryThing (see my sig), but I suspect we have upwards of 5000 in addition to the children's.

[nukeswife]

I voted for 100-500 but that's just a guess. We have to move every 18 months or so and the movers are always complaining about how many books we have. I love books though and we don't do well with the library although we do try to use it at times. My dh always says that if I leave Barnes and Noble for under $100 it's a good day :tongue_smilie:

[Eliana]

Everywhere.

I regard bookshelves as similar to thick wallpaper--they should ideally be on most walls. Walls without them are less rich, more bare.

Books are not clutter unless they are piled on the floor in 2 layers. By definition, a single layer is not clutter. It is simply a book management and access system. 2 layers is clutter, because you cannot see all of the titles in the back pile without moving the front pile.

A vase taking up space in a bookshelf is a waste of valuable book space, and a travesty. Vases belong on tables. BTW, a bed table or side table is just a book pile holder in disguise. Vases belong on dining room tables or kitchen tables only.

Cartons of books do not count as clutter.

Neither do library books.

And, no, I do not have issues. Nope. Not me. (Not I!)

:lol:

"thick wallpaper" *yes*!

I do have to disagree with the idea of stacks of books possibly being clutter. When the stacks are clearly sorted, and are stacked where they are to be handy for regular study sessions, a research project, or as part of a tangible reading list, they cannot fairly be called clutter.

[WTMindy]

I'm one who prefers not to collect too many books. I like to have some in my home, but a bunch of full bookshelves would make me feel claustrophobic and cluttered. At the library, yes; in my home, no. Having said that, there of course some that I do own and together with our Sonlight cores I suppose the numbers add up.
Ditto! (but substitute TOG for Sonlight :-))

[RoughCollie]

I reckon we've got about 6,000 books at home. I don't like living in a library.

[Jenny in Atl]

You can always tell a lot about someone by how many bks they have or don't.

[Mrs. Readsalot]

although I am working on reducing this number. I need our shelves to not be double booked. It is a personal goal of mine for spring cleaning.

[JumpedIntoTheDeepEndFirst]

Would it give you a hint as to how many books we own if I said my husband (after dating for 4 years) finally proposed a week before I received my Masters Degree in Library Science? :)

At last count we have 4-5,000 books with us and another 2-3,000 in storage. We also managed to eliminate a few hundred before the last move. I'll be curious to see what is in those storage boxes (its been nearly 7 years since I saw them). I know we culled many before packing up but it will be nice to visit old friends again. Now my only worry is how many I have repurchased...