Aug 16 2017

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The Obsessive Bookseller Simplifies Life [7]: Photos

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In case you missed my Introductory Post, my world was in such an upheaval that I was forced to take drastic measures by simplifying and organizing all the things that caused me stress. Each month, in 2017, I’m tackling different aspects of my life that are clutter-stressors by organizing and altering them into things that bring me joy.

August 2017: Photos

So, you might be wondering why I skipped July’s Simplifying Life post. It’s not because I’ve been posting less. It’s not because I lost motivation. It’s not even because I got busy. It’s because IM STILL WORKING ON MY DANG PHOTO PROJECT. This topic quickly launched itself into the most frustrating project I’ve ever tackled, setting me way behind schedule for all of the others lined up for 2017. Let me explain.

Grab some popcorn, we’ll be here a while.

-> I usually try to make these posts insightful and relevant to others… This photos post is likely going to be neither. I decided to share it anyways because it’s still a part of my journey in 2017.

The Photo Project:

The story starts almost 2 years ago when my husband and I decided we’d like to start a family. One of the thousand worries that cross my mind was “I need to get my pictures organized so I’m ready for baby photos” (because my answer to every stressful thing in life is to organize). Thus began my 4 month embarkment on organizing the photos I had, procuring a reliable backup for them, and getting into a routine for ordering prints. This initial organizational process was brutal.

My first issue was operating solely on my 10-year-old Mac laptop that’s at max memory/capacity and takes %#@& forever to do anything (I have to be willing to wait 3 – 5 minutes every time I click the mouse). It goes without saying that I am NOT a patient person. It was an agonizing process of painstakingly arranging thousands of photos into their own “events,” meaning I didn’t put them into albums (this will be relevant later). This took about 4 months of working on it in baby steps – a little at a time throughout the days (while dealing with an eyestrain injury, might I add). It involved several reboots and freak outs and I seriously considered chucking my computer on several occasions. I think this Obsessive Bookseller finally found an organizational project that was not fun to work on.

Things went well for several months after that. Right about the time my son was born, I was On. My. Game! Uploading pics, ordering prints within a few weeks, and scrapbooking them immediately. This was level-up on-top-of-shit, even for me.

And then my computer reached max capacity, and it was all downhill from there.

Flash forward 4 months to last Christmas where my wonderful husband scrimped and saved (even going so far as to have his parents spend their Christmas money for him on me) to get me a brand new computer. I sobbed.

This next step should have been simple:

1. Obtain an external hard drive
2. Put files from my old Mac onto external hard drive
3. Put files onto new computer using external hard drive
4. Contiue on with life using my new computer.

If only. Here’s what happened instead:

1. – 2. Were actually successful… Then when I went to put the old files onto the new computer, it told me the Operating Systems weren’t compatible. This means I had to go back and upgrade my old Mac to the new operating system. The trouble is, with the new operating system came a new version of Photos where ALL OF MY EVENTS DISAPPEARED!!!

I went through the 5 stages of grief for the next two months.

When I finally accept the situation, I went back on the old computer and started the organizing process again from scratch. Only this time, I decided to sort all of the photos onto folders in my hard drive, rather than within the program itself. This took me several months to accomplish.

Niki’s thought process: “Okay, so the photos are organized, each computer has the correct operating system, and now I’m ready to repeat steps 1-4 and get my new computer up and running! In three… 2… 1…

The files didn’t transfer from the hard drive. WTF??!

Oh, okay, so only a small portion of the files transferred because apparently my new computer only has 4G of memory…shit.”

What to do? My first inclination was to delete unnecessary files, but no matter what I took off, the memory never seemed to drop much. I wanted as much room as possible for photos going forward, so I had a brilliant idea: “I’m going to figure out how to wipe the computer back to factory setting so I can go in and, instead of transferring files, add just to the programs I’m going to need most!”

As it turns out, there’s a huge problem with that idea: if you wipe a computer back to factory settings, it also erases the Operating System. If you never went in and claimed the computer with your Apple ID before wiping it, it won’t let you do anything with it because it thinks you’re a dirty thief.

So here I sit, with a useless new computer, no way to get photos off of my phone because my old computer is full, and 2 years of work that have amounted to absolutely nothing.

I’m going to need another few months to grieve.

The goal of getting photos organized was to simplify my life when it came to retrieving, preserving, and ordering them. As you can see by this sob story, I have been unable to simplify anything and in fact have managed to snowball any progress into glaring non-simplification. I’m still working daily on a solution, but am so sick of this project that I’m ready to wash my hands of it and move on to the next one.

Project Status: Photos Most Definitely NOT Simplified. Yet.

by Niki Hawkes

May 24 2017

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The Obsessive Bookseller Simplifies Life [5]: Health

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May 2017: Health

2017 seems to be the year of personal revelations. Each month, I’ve been tackling things that caused me stress and turning them into things that bring me joy. Health has always been important to me, and this Simplifying Life project has really helped me set (and achieve) attainable goals. A lot of work went into it though, so it’s important for me to clarify that the simplification comes in the form of having set goals so I don’t have to stress about what I should be doing.

Disclaimer: I’m going to be bringing up a lot of health “facts” that I’ve read while doing research and am using as a basis for all of my personal health goals. I’m mentioning them merely to explain why I started doing the things I am to get healthier, not as a means to inform or educate. Heck, I’m not even standing by them as accurate, so please take everything I say with a grain of salt and do your own research before following suit.

The Trackers:

There’s something irreplaceably helpful about being able to see progress in the form of checkmarks all over my health tracker. I began this journey by identifying the physical and emotional components that go into making me healthier, happier person. I created an Excel template with all of these items and set a daily checkmark goal.

I felt my health tracker should include more than just eating and exercising, but also things that bring me emotional joy and, oddly enough, personal hygiene. I noticed that when I took the time to curl and style my hair in the mornings, I had a much more productive day. Maybe it’s because I felt like I had my “armor” on and was ready to face the world, more so than when I just tromped to work with my hair up in a messy bun. Whatever the reason, all of these things helped me feel healthier. I found this tracker incredibly motivational. Every time I felt the need to do something, I’d pick an item and see it through (most of which took under 5 minutes). I used this tracker for several months before getting into enough of a habit that I didn’t need it anymore.

The Food:

I consider it almost impossible to change your diet overnight. I talked about this a little bit in my Simplifying Life: Food post, but I really think if I had started trying to eat healthier all at once, it would’ve been doomed for failure. Instead, what I did was look up foods good for your brain and slowly start incorporating them into my diet. Over the course of a couple of years, I have slowly change my habits so that I’m buying less processed foods and more fresh foods. They say when you go to the grocery store, try to shop more on the perimeter rather than in the aisles to avoid processed foods. So far in 2017, I stuck to the edges, only venturing in occasionally for cereal (my true <3) and peanut butter.

Another thing I wanted to track was my Saturated Fat intake. I remember reading somewhere that 30% of your daily intake should include fats, but only a small fraction of that should be Saturated Fats (for me, it was about 13g to 15g per day) and 0% Trans Fats. The trouble is, I had no idea what I was actually consuming. Part of my motivation was a couple of documentaries I’d watched on Alzheimer’s disease. In one Ted Talk, a doctor claimed his research showed people had a much higher likelihood of experiencing Dementia and Alzheimer’s if you ate more than 20+ grams of Saturated Fats per day. The research he presented showed a strong correlation between the two, however, I am always skeptical when data is thrown in front of my face. I haven’t done any research to see how thorough their experiment was, nor have I done any to see if anyone else has substantiated this claim. That said, it got me thinking that, regardless of Saturated Fat’s effect on Alzheimer’s, it’s probably not a bad idea to start paying attention to how much I’m getting.

Now, I considered myself a fairly healthy eater. I don’t indulge in candy bars, ice cream, or most other processed foods very often. But, as soon as I started reading labels and tracking consumption, I discovered I was still well above my daily Saturated Fat intake goals. For example, my coworkers always bring in these frosted shortbread cookies, and I’d always just figured they had a lot of sugar, but not much else. I’d eat two, sometimes three every time. Come to find out that each cookie also had 8g of Saturated Fat! O_o! After two cookies, I had totally blown my Saturated Fat intake for the day. And I really don’t even like them that much – I just ate them because they were available. It’s all about choices. And becoming aware of what you’re putting into your body. I decided I would much rather indulge in a giant bowl of natural chocolate ice cream at the end of the day than waste it all on a tiny cookie at lunch. I digress…

There are a ton of cute meal trackers on the internet for this (google it). Mine are “fugly but functional.”

The 10,000 Steps:

I noticed when I was doing my general health tracker that it was always a lot more fun to rack up steps than it was to do strength training. It also was a lot easier to find data on calories burned based on steps taken rather than individual strength training (I’m antsy in general). According to the research I found (don’t quote me), walking 10,000 steps per day (provided at least a half-hour of those steps is a more rigorous workout) burns about 500 calories. After 7 days of this, you’re conceivably losing 3500 calories, or 1 pound. Now, all of this depends on how many calories your body needs to maintain its current weight, so you can’t just eat what you want, burn 3500 cal, and expect to lose weight. It’s a math game, and every person is different. Anyway, this seemed like a goal I could really get behind because I’ve been enjoying running lately, it’s beautiful weather outside, and it keeps me from feeling so sedentary. I have a nifty little app that helps me track my steps, but I’m looking into getting a fitbit so I don’t always have to have my phone on me.

I also remember reading somewhere that sitting for more than 2 hours a day straight negates any health benefits gained from eating well and exercising. The 10,000 steps keeps me up and moving, and as an added benefit keeps me from wearing out my eyes staring at a computer screen for too long. I just need to apologize to the people in the office directly below mine because I’m now clomping around so much…

The Preparedness:

All of these health goals involving food are absolutely redundant if you don’t make sure they are available. If you’re at home and all there is to eat is junk food, then you have only two choices: break your health goal and feel guilty about it, or starve. I can eat good foods all day every day if they are available, but the moment I get lazy (by not going to the store or prepping produce), that’s when I revert back towards eating poorly.

Now, this is usually the point where I list all the goals I achieved, but in the case of health, the endgame is longevity. I’m hoping the good habits I’m getting into now and the lifestyle changes I’ve been slowly making over the last three or four years will pay dividends as I get older. I can tell you one thing, because I’ve started tracking numbers and setting daily goals, I feel amazing and have stopped worrying so much about what the future holds. So, in that sense, I have successfully reduced my stress in both my current and future health situations, and that, in itself is a win!

Project Status: Health Simplified!

by Niki Hawkes

Apr 17 2017

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The Obsessive Bookseller Simplifies Life [4]: Food

April 2017: Food

First off, it feels weird doing a non-book topic… Anyway, I’ll be the first to admit that parts of this post involved excessive organization, even for me. Don’t let me kid you though, I freaking loved every moment of it. The thing is, I had so many food-related goals to tackle, but just wasn’t getting anywhere with them. I was in desperate need of a change (also if one more thing fell out of my freezer onto my foot, I was gonna lose it). As the whole point of Simplifying Life in 2017 is to reduce stress and make life easier, “food” had to be a topic. While working on this project, I realized I had way too much for one post, so decided to split it up and focus on food this month and save health goals for May.

Here’s what I’d hoped to accomplish by the end of April:

clean out and organize my kitchen.
utilize foods from my freezer/cupboard.
stop wasting so much food.
Stay within a budget.
eat better.

The Fridge/Freezer:

The starting point for this project was learning what I had to work with. I pulled everything out of my fridge and freezer and went through expiration dates. I threw so much stuff out – it hurts my heart. Inevitably, the root of my wasteful problems was not knowing what I had. Everything was hidden behind a thousand condiment bottles.

My husband has issues. Only two of these are mine.

Anyway, the initial organization of the fridge was a huge wake-up call for me. I let a lot of stuff get nasty in there, and that is definitely not helping my OCD/germaphobicness at all. I now have “clean out the fridge” on my weekly cleaning list to help maintain what I’ve accomplished so far.

The freezer was next. I learned a few things about what a freezer hoarder I am (is that a thing?). I’d somehow inherited boxes and boxes of freezer foods from my mom and grandma that I knew I wasn’t going to eat, but felt guilty letting them throw out. But maybe, just maybe I’d eat it (nope). After 2+ years of hanging on to it for no good reason – out it went.

Everything came out for evaluation. Almost everything I’d “inherited” was expired, and covered in enough freezer-burn to be almost unrecognizable – gone! I threw away almost an entire garbage bag worth of expired food. I vow here and now that this will never happen again!

Additionally, because we are crashing at my in-laws’ vacation home, we found this nugget hidden at the back of the freezer:

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It was a solid block of ice.

The Lists:

Since I’m clearly not in the habit of exploring my freezer for things to eat, I decided I needed a better way to keep track of what’s in there. I grabbed a notebook, labeled it my “food log,” and proceeded to write every item in my freezer onto this nifty little list:

When I plan out meals for the week, I choose from these available items first. Not only does it help me use up my stock of food before it goes bad, but it saves me money. I have a lot of unutilized proteins that go a long way towards feeding my husband and I (when I actually take the time to plan ahead and thaw stuff).

When trying to eat healthy, planning is key. It’s impossible to not feel like you’re starving to death when your only options are unhealthy snacks or nothing at all. Over the last several years, I’ve been slowly introducing foods from this “brain foods” list into my diet and now have a pretty good selection of healthy options to choose from. Every week I create a shopping list in my food tracker which includes all the healthy foods I’ll need to take with me to work along with supplemental ingredients I’ll need to cook whatever items I’m utilizing from my freezer. Paperclipped to the back of that notebook are all of my coupons.

The Thrifter:

Let’s talk about coupons for a minute (because apparently when you turn thirty, saving fifty cents on cream corn is the highlight of your day). I have a strong love/hate relationship with coupons. It seems like in the past whenever I tried to utilize them, I always ended up spending more at the grocery store than originally planned. They make you feel like you’re getting a deal on something that you don’t normally buy or eat. I found myself buying $10 to $20 more in groceries just to save $3 and coupons. This is not good coupon shopping. The key is to only bring coupons for things you buy anyway.

Now, after all of that effort, it means absolutely nothing if you FREAKING FORGET to hand the cashier your coupons. I’d go through the trouble of cutting them out, bringing them to the store, making sure what I’m buying matches their specifications (which required me digging in my purse and pulling out the little wads until I found the right one… Assuming I remembered having them in the first place), and dragging them all the way to the register only to forget to use them. Then there’s the whole debate on whether it’s worth my time to stand in the return in line at customer service to have them make all the adjustments or just go home. For the record, I always just go home.

My new system solved all of those problems.

Right before heading to the store I’d go through and identify which coupons I’d like to use and add the items to my shopping list, writing the word “coupon” next to the applicable item so I’d remember to reference it in the store. Then I’d paperclip only the relevant coupons to the same page as my shopping list and – voilà everything I need is in front of my face. I take this list of the store and buy only what was on it, marking things off as I go along. If I were super savvy, I’d write the prices of everything I picked up next to the items as I cross them off (for future reference), but I’m not quite that far gone yet. Carrying around the notebook is a bit cumbersome, but if I set it down, I’d forget something on it or forget to hand the coupons to the cashier. It stays glued to my hand until I’m in the checkout line, and then it goes on that little counter right next to the credit card pad. I have not forgotten to hand the cashier coupons since, and it actually saves me ten minutes of digging in my purse each time I visit the store.

This method helps me in two ways – 1. I’m saving money on things I buy anyway and 2. I have a clear cut list of things I need to get. Having the list right in front of me means I usually stay within budget.

The final awesome thing that I’ve just discovered is the Walmart “savings catcher” feature on their app. If you scan your receipt after each trip and submit it to their “savings catcher”, Walmart will compare the prices of everything you purchased with competitors in the area and GIVE YOU the difference! Holy freaking crap – why haven’t I been using this feature all along? I’ve been submitting receipts since since the first of February and have already gotten back over $30 in price adjustments. O_o

The final thing I’ve started doing to help me not waste food is as follows:

The Prepwork:

As soon as I get home from the store, I take a minute to prepare fresh fruits and vegetables and put them into containers so they’re ready to eat. I discovered during my evaluation of what causes so much food waste was that most of the fresh produce I throw away was caused by laziness. How stupid is that?

Anyway, my food log now has a section on it for “perishables” in which I list all of the foods I want to make sure to eat before they go bad. When I need a snack, I’ll take a look at that list first. It’s working.

Also, with more room in the fridge, I can cook extra portions (or estimate what we would’ve wasted) and freeze it for later. Bonus meals in a month or two with no real extra effort or cleanup – win/win.

Overall, the goal of this month’s simplification goal was to organize the food I have and make it easier to stay organize going forward. Saving money and eating healthier are fringe benefits that frankly outweigh the initial goals themselves. I’ve been utilizing these new systems for a couple of months now and am loving them! There’s room in my fridge, money in my pocket, and a whole host of healthy snacks to eat every week.

Project Status: Foods Simplified!

by Niki Hawkes

Mar 15 2017

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The Obsessive Bookseller Simplifies Life [3]: Goodreads

March 2017: Goodreads

I wanted to include Goodreads in my 2017 Simplifing Life journey because it’s my favorite book resource and I definitely hadn’t been using it to its fullest. I wanted to become more active in this amazing bookish community and make it easier to find information – both of which required a surprising amount of work. I started with too many lists, too many people, I was spending too much effort. Here are some things I simplified:

Note: as useful as I find the Goodreads app, it lacks a lot of functions essential
to this organizatioal process. All changes were made using the desktop version.

The Top Friends List:

Not all the people who “friend” me love the same books as I do. I love seeing that most of my Goodreads friends are reading as voraciously as I am, but I noticed as my friends list grew, I was no longer seeing as many things from my closest friends as I’d use to. Funny story, so I went as far as to write a suggestion to customer service saying something along the lines of “hey! It would be really awesome if Goodreads had this ‘see first’ option for you could make sure you’re not missing updates from certain people.” As it turns out, they already have this feature, I just wasn’t aware of it because it’s only available on the desktop version and I do practically everything on my phone. It’s called “Top Friend” and even though going through each of my 750 friends one by one took FOREVER, I now happily catch every update from my BFFs. I did it the hard way, so here’s a step-by-step to a way I think would be a little easier:

1. Click on your profile picture in the upper right-hand corner and select friends.
2. Next to the alphabet is a sort by box. Click that and select top friends. This will bring up everyone currently marked as a top friend first.
3. Select edit friend to the right of the sort box and the little top friend checkboxes should appear.
4. Go through one page at a time and deselect people at will. Be sure to hit “done editing” after every page. For some reason it doesn’t save your progress if you try to do multiple pages at once.
5. Now, you can search one person at a time and add more of your favorites to the list.Unfortunately, if you can’t remember everyone, you’ll have to go through alphabetically (the hard way) like I did.

Once the initial work is finished, the list is fairly easy to maintain. Either accept all friend requests on the desktop version where it allows you to designate “top friend” status, or periodically go in and repeat steps 1-4 (Note: any time you send a friend request, they automatically attain top friend status).

The Commenting Conundrum:

I noticed that when I comment on someone else’s status, I rarely get a notification when they respond (I thought people were just ignoring me haha). Here are a couple of ways to keep track of comments:

Method 1:
1. Actually click on the person status – you can’t do this by responding on just the homepage.
2. Click on advanced under the comment box.
3. Click notify me when people reply.

Method 2:
1. Click on your profile picture in the upper right-hand corner and select my comments.
2. Click through and see what is new.

Neither method is a perfect solution, but they sure beat trying to remember where I commented, navigating to that person’s profile, and digging through their status updates until I find it.

The Fantasy Buddy Reads Group:

The point of all of this organizing is to make it easier for me to be involved in the Goodreads community. What better way to enhance the experience than to join an amazing group? I love the FBR Goodreads group because:

they love fantasy books! (duh)
they’re active – something bookish is always being discussed.
They keep me engaged with prompts.
They are supportive – especially with the many challenges were doing.
They have simple, yet excellent enforced rules which help avoid spoilers (my nemesis).
The moderators are amazing.
And finally, they make me feel like I belong. (Awwwww)

I’ve read a couple of books with them so far and had a ball. One of my favorite elements is their Incomplete Series subfolder where we track our reading progress. It’s a bonus organizing tool that allowed me to sort all the series I’ve read and am still working on into a convenient priority list. Love it!

The Bookshelves:

I’ve gone through a series of GR bookshelves over the years trying to find ones that I can refer to often and get a lot of use out of. Unfortunately, most often I spend a ton of energy on one and never refer to it again. My recent Book Journaling project also made a few bookshelves obsolete. Part of my organizing process goal with Goodreads was to delete useless shelves and polish up the keepers. Here’s a look at what I ended up with:

Arcs: to (obviously) keep track of ARCs. I find this shelf useful because I can easily decipher at a glance which books I still need to read based on the little red rating stars (on the app).

Books like Hunger games & Books Like Throne of Glass: these posts on my blog are by far my most popular as far as Google’s search engine is concerned. In them, I included a convenient link to these GR shelves so people can quickly add them to their to read lists. I love the idea of linking the two, so even though I never refer to them myself I’ve no problem keeping them.

DNFed: I only have a few titles on the shelf so far because it took me forever to find a way to put it together that I liked. I love having a record of my time and effort spent on these titles represented on my shelves. I write DNF Q&A posts which is my official assessment for these unfinished titles. I also now mark each book as “read” on Goodreads because you have to have some sort of status with it to upload a review (and it annoyed me to change it back to “want to read” when DNFing. It wasn’t accurate). The only thing I was afraid of was that marking it as read would skew up my yearly reading challenge, but all you have to do is go in and remove start/finish dates and voilà! I also don’t assign these titles ratings.

Favorites: of the 1090 books Goodreads says I’ve read, these 21 titles are the ultimate favorites. I’ve recently tried to go back and re-rate most of my other five star titles to 4.5 so that a solid five star rating for me carries some weight.

First Reads: like five years ago I won one giveaway and GR told me to make this shelf. I am now terrified that deleting it will jinx me from ever winning another lol.

Kids Collection: as I’m a new mom, I’m getting my kid’s books organized early. If I can offer only one thing (you know, beyond birthing, feeding, clothing, and nurturing him), it’s an organized library. XD

My Library Catalog/My library TBR: I’d been trying to find a way to catalog my personal collection for YEARS, but hadn’t managed to find anything that wouldn’t take several more years to put together. Then someone mentioned the Goodreads app had a barcode scanning feature and I. Went. Hogwild! As I was scanning, I put everything into the My Library Catalog (1088) and all the ones I still needed to read also into My Library TBR (716). I clearly have a lot of work to do, and this list doesn’t yet include all of my YA titles… I may do a separate one for those. I definitely would like to focus on getting through more of my owned titles, but alas that’ll have to wait until our new house is finished being built so I can pull all of my books out of boxes… I miss them.

Upcoming Releases/Upcoming Releases with Covers: I use these shelves to help me organize my “Coming Soon” posts. I have two separate lists because, when it was one shelf, I got tired of scrolling through all the titles trying to find new cover reveals. Now that they are separate, flipping through all of those generic tan placeholders trying to spot a single gorgeous new cover only takes a couple of seconds. It’s so much more gratifying!

Wow! That was lot. And here I was afraid I wouldn’t have enough for a post (perhaps I over-prepared). In any case, my goals with moderating Goodreads were to make it easier to get organized, keep track of favorite people, get more involved in the community, and have more fun. I think I have achieved every last one of them!

Project Status: Goodreads Simplified!

by Niki Hawkes

Feb 8 2017

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The Obsessive Bookseller Simplifies Life [2]: Book Journaling

February 2017: Book Journaling

A few months ago I came across a blog post for bullet journaling for the first time… O_o!! Where has this been?! I’m clearly super behind the times, because how can uber-organized color-coding, creative awesomeness that allows you to track goals and see progress have not popped on to my radar before now? Sign me up!

As it happens, I was in some desperate need of organization (see Introductory Post above). I also had a million cute notebooks just waiting to be used in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, most bullet journaling topics weren’t things I felt compelled to keep track of on a daily basis. But there was one topic that definitely sparked my interest:

The Bookshelf:

If you search Pinterest for bullet journaling ideas about books, this is pretty much what you get (many a lot more creative than my own). You can “stack” your books anyway you’d like, but I discovered pretty quickly that I like mine orderly. Also, with the straight up and down approach, I can add little boxes underneath each book to track reading completions. This bookshelf ignited a bunch of other book related tracking ideas that I’m excited to share with you. Instead of bullet journaling, I’m book journaling!

The Book Journal:

I have so many different bookish things to keep track of and my Book Journal has completely revolutionized how I do practically everything. Before, I was relying on a complicated mix of jotted notes, half-assed Goodreads lists, and memory. Now, everything, and I mean EVERYTHING I could possibly need to reference is organized in one place – a cute little notebook that I carry everywhere with me (because, you know, books are life). Here are some of the things I track with it:

The Blogging Schedule:

Not only has this tracker allowed me to schedule posts ahead for the first time in my blogging career, but it has also given me a quick snapshot of titles I need to review. It also helps me remember which Thursdays I’m supposed to review for The Independent (a local newspaper), which often used to slip through my memory. The Blogging Schedule is definitely the Book Journaling component I’ve referred to most often.

The TBR Tackler Shelf:

I do my Tackling the TBR every month, but I’d have to come up with titles on the spot (which wasn’t working well with my intent to spend less and utilize the library more – many titles have to be put on hold weeks before I want to read them). Now, I can plan ahead. But the BEST PART is that I now have a quick reference to see what’s on my reading list without having to log on to my blog and navigate to the post every time. I love being able to check the boxes underneath each title when finished and see my progress over each month. I put a little half slash in the box of the currently reading titles. I also use it to track upcoming Buddy Reads with my Goodreads group so I don’t overbook myself… no pun intended. Of all the things I track in my Book Journal, the TBR shelf is by far my favorite.

The Currently Reading Shelf:

I used to take copious notes about the books that I was reading, but found that I was spending way more time on the notes that I was the review itself. Also, I’d write them in any handy notebook, which means when it actually came time to write the review, I’d inevitably be without the correct one. All I really needed was a place for notes to jar my memory, and this element of my Book Journal works perfectly for that.

The Unfinished Series Shelf:

THIS! I have a nifty Incomplete Series List over with my Goodreads group, but this format was a lot more fun to create and refer to. It allows me to see if I’m up-to-date on any given series instantly, which definitely helps me prioritize going forward, as I usually look at these pages when planning out my upcoming TBR Tackler Shelves.

1500 for 1 challenge:

I’ve been referring to this for ages. Basically, I get to buy 1 book for every 1500 pages I read. It’s an amazing system which helps me moderate spending, read books I already own, and feel like I’m accomplishing something. I already tracked pages just like this in another notebook, so there was no doubt that this had to be included in the Journal.

The Wish lists:

Bring on the Bookshelves!!! I think about books a lot. I found myself spending several hours a week logging on to audible or my library’s website just to remind myself what I had in the wishlists. It was a weird compulsion and total waste of time, but for some reason it bothered me not being able to remember the 100+ titles in each one. In any case, since I transferred those titles to the Book Journal, I haven’t been back since! This, more than anything else, was a time and sanity saver.

Overall, this project has been one of the most rewarding I’ve ever undertaken. I treat this journal like it’s a work of art in progress and find myself flipping through the pages just to appreciate what I’ve done. Honestly, once you figure out spacing and formatting for each type of tracker, it doesn’t take long to create. I spend maybe ten minutes a day updating it (which my boss would probably call shirking). But compared to how much time I was wasting trying to find information spread out all over, it definitely is the most efficient thing I could have done. It’s literally a one-stop shop for everything book related in my life – what could be better than that? :-)

Project Status: Book Journaling Simplified!

by Niki Hawkes

Jan 20 2017

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The Obsessive Bookseller Simplifies Life [1]: Blog Love

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January 2017: Blog Love

The first order of business in my goal to simplify life in 2017 (i.e. January’s goal) was to take control of my blogging experience. Before I dive into my observations, here’s a relevant side story: I have this really fun karaoke singing app called Smule Sing, which I’ve been on for about a year and a half now. At one point I followed over 400 people, which caused me to wade through hundreds of open calls every day just to find ones from my favorite singers. One night I got fed up and started paring down the list until I was following only my favorites, and it was the best thing I could have done. Now every time I log in, I only have about 5 to 20 quality open calls to scroll through rather than hundreds of miscellaneous ones, which allows me to spend more time singing and less time scrolling. That’s when the epiphany struck – I wondered how much more satisfying my blogging experience would be if I applied the same tactic.

I love reading other people’s posts, but find the endlessly scrolling process incredibly frustrating. I couldn’t tell you the last time I logged on to my wordpress reader and actually enjoyed looking through the feed (heck, I couldn’t even tell you the last time I logged on). Only after my Smule Sing experience did I realize what my problem was. I thought it was just laziness or a lack of interest, but discovered following too many people makes it impossible to pay attention to and even differentiate between all the blogs. It was time to clean house! So I took a closer look at who I was following, and here’s what I discovered:

Of all the blogs I was following, I only recognized about 20%.
75% of the unrecognized blogs were guilt-follows.
I was only genuinely interested in the content of about 10%.
15% of the blogs I was following don’t exist anymore.
Another 30% hadn’t posted anything new for at least two years.
Most importantly, I had built and maintained genuine relationships with only about 5%.

That’s not the blogging experience I signed up for.

Over the last several months, I’ve been successfully surrounding myself with an amazing community of readers on Goodreads. To be a part of such a supportive, group of people who love the same books I do has been amazing. It’s the type of feeling I’m hoping to also nurture with my fellow bloggers and I have just the plan to make that happen.

You see, by paring down the number of blogs I follow to a more manageable number, not only will it be more fun and rewarding to log on to the reader every few days and see what my favorites have been posting, but I now know exactly who’s posting what and can start becoming an active blog buddy (and don’t worry, if I’ve already been a half-assed blog buddy by commenting on your blog more than once in the last 6 months, we’re still buds). I am certain I will add more blogs in the future, but I’m definitely going to take care to add only those I’m prepared to interact with. I vowed after this process to never guilt-follow again… that’s how I get into trouble and I hate how disingenuous it makes me feel. Once I get used to my new system, I can slowly start adding more blogs. My starting point is 40 blogs (pared down from 150).

The moral of the story is, I want to be a good blog buddy, decrease my stress by organizing and decluttering, and improve my overall blogging experience. I think I’ve accomplished all three.

Project Status: Blog Love Simplified!

by Niki Hawkes