Liz Armbrecht

Emphasis on challenge.

When we moved last summer, we had to squeeze all books and board games onto two bookshelves in the back of our living room, when, before, we had a whole extra bedroom dedicated to our library.

I carefully packed most of my beloved collection away and brought with me all the books that had been sitting on my shelf and had yet to be read. The idea was, due to the size of our apartment, I wouldn’t buy anymore books, and use the time here to read what I had or use the library (which is delightfully and dangerously next door to our apartment).

Instead, I experienced some pretty low mental health as a result of settling into a new spot and routine, and I took any dopamine hit I could get, which was mostly book buying. (Hey, it’s not actual drugs, right?)

So, I now have more books than what I started with when I moved nearly 18 months ago, and I am OUT of space. Like, officially.

I saw someone on Instagram who put herself on a book buying ban in 2025 by saying that she had to be below 25% of unread books on her shelf before she could bring a new book home, and I Ioved that idea! I carefully cataloged and counted my collection so I could do the same.

I have 224 books with me, and 140 of them are unread, which means my current percentage of unread books is 62.5% To get to my goal of 25% of my total collection, that’s 84 books to read before buying a new one. That’s more than I normally read in a year and doesn’t include the book club books I’ll read in 2026! If that’s not motivation…

To clarify for this super scientific study, the goal is not to read as fast as possible, but to read these instead of just getting new ones and adding to the pile (and problem). And, my e-books don’t count towards my TBR because they’re not contributing to physical space. But they DO count toward my cold turkey book buying ban because otherwise I will simply never catch up on my physical books!

Anyway, it’s very possible I forget about this in three months. But I thought that by putting this into writing and making a very visual list of what I already had, I’d be more likely to hold myself accountable. Wish me luck!

*Onyx Storm not pictured; for some reason, the image got missed. Only noting in case someone counts and comes up with 139. Better read that one first, ha!