When I was initially thinking of a title for this week’s blog, I thought of “Winter Weading” with weading implying reading. Our son used to say W for R when he was a little guy, so cute. Then I thought, well maybe weeding as in “weeding out” is what I can actually work with.

A lot of us are trying to simplify and clean out during these cold winter months….which can often lead to the traditional spring cleaning later.  We clean out clothes and closets, we organize the junk drawer (why?) and under the kitchen sink. We refold linens in the closet and donate some of the holiday decor that we rarely use. We may organize the toys, games, and “stuff” that we’ve accumulated over the years. 

What about re-organizing our books and our reading materials? This can make a difference in our reading time and even our content. I have weeded out the entire house over the last four years. There have been moves and many life changes and I have cleaned out “every everything”, including reading material.  I love all of my books, but I am finally acknowledging that I need to “share” some of these gems with others who may not have access to books and reading material.

I’ve organized all of my books: picture books, toddler books, children’s books, young adult books, and books for grown ups. This weeding process was like a walk down memory lane. I have books from my children’s childhood and some even from my own childhood. Admittedly, most I wanted to keep. But, there were some duplicates and some that I didn’t think had messages that were pure or noble enough to keep.

The best part of this process though, was finding impactful books that I had forgotten about …. and would love to read again. I pulled out the Jan Karon series (At Home in Mitford) and hope to dive into those once more. I pulled out special toddler books that we absolutely MUST READ to the grands!  I got excited about the treasures I had within my very home and had forgotten about. 

Laying the books out across the floor made we want to read many of them over again and to share them with our littles. Winter weeding led me to some hopes for winter reading! Through the winter weeding out of books came the finding of some old treasures. And, we will use some of them to BOOK TIME with our grandkids, using content that is good, pure and reading worthy … and sometimes just a lot of fun and silly!

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