Hit 500 books on my shelf and had a mini panic attack

I counted last weekend while reorganizing and I'm sitting at exactly 500 volumes on two Billy shelves. That number surprised me because I always thought I was a casual reader, but apparently not. The weird part is that 300 of them are still unread, so I finally made a rule about borrowing before buying. How do you folks keep your TBR pile from eating the whole room?

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drew_west2mo ago

I hit 450 last year and same thing, 280 unread, so I started doing a "one in, one out" rule with a box under my bed for the overflow, and it actually kept things sane. Borrowing is the move, plus the library guilt keeps me reading faster than owning ever did.

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drew7912mo ago

My rule is if I haven't cracked a book open within six months of buying it, it goes to the used bookstore down the street. I got 40 bucks in store credit last time and used it to buy a couple of things I actually wanted to read right then. The other thing that saved me is keeping a spreadsheet on my phone, just title and date bought, so I can see at a glance what's actually been sitting there. Borrowing from the library is great but I also swap with buddies at work, we do a little book trading bag every couple months. It's not perfect but my shelf finally stopped growing faster than I can read.

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