Cleaning Up My Goodreads Shelves – #goodreadance2021

Who are some of your favorite bloggers? One of mine is Shealea at the blog Shut Up Shealea. She recently announced a new challenge, called the #goodreadance2021 challenge. It’s kind of a spring cleaning challenge – in September-November. I know that is actually spring for some of you, though for me it’s fall. Fall cleaning works just as well! You can find her post about it here. I love that it brings bookworms together but that it’s super general, so each person can fit the challenge to their needs and goals.

I’m in the process of moving to a new city, in a new state, and I figure it’s a good time to get my shit together. Or at least pretend to by organizing different aspects of my life haha. I’m the kind of person who likes feeling in control, and I think having things neat and organized definitely helps me to feel settled. So since I can’t quite yet organize things IRL (in real life), I’m tackling my digital world. I’m going to be focusing on cleaning up my Goodreads shelves first! Then maybe if I’m feeling motivated, I’ll move on to cleaning up this blog, my bookstagram, etc. We’ll see!

What do my shelves look like now?

Firstly, let’s take a look at what my Goodreads shelves look like right now. You can see above the different shelves I have. From these, you can see that I have a few main uses for Goodreads:

• tracking the books I’ve read (with dates)
• marking books that I own and need to read (the shelves that start with “tbr”, and the “arcs or books sent” shelf)
• marking books that I want to read and want to buy (“must buy immediately” and “to buy” and “pre slash ordered”
• saving books that sound interesting (“hm interesting” and “maybe library”)

What are my goals for #goodreadance2021?

Maybe those shelves don’t look too messy to some of you, but this is a little unwieldy for me and I want to straighten it out.

Goal #1 = Figure out new shelving system

First, I want to change how I organize my shelves. I want a cleaner way to track the four main things I mentioned above. Tracking the “read” books can stay the same, that is straightforward and neat. However, I want to change how I save books that sound interesting, and books that I want to buy. I’m not sure yet how that’s going to look, but I guess that’s the point of having this goal haha.

Goal #2 = Clean out “want to read” / “hm interesting” / “maybe library”

Some of those shelves may be changed depending on goal number one, but the idea of goal 2 will remain the same. I just want to cut down on the books I’m keeping track of, and make sure they really ARE books that I want to read. Sometimes I add things that are pretty far out in terms of publishing, so it’s not a bad idea for me to revisit and reevaluate.

Bonus goal = Syncing physical TBR

I’m counting this as a bonus goal, because it partly relies on me being reunited with my physical books. I want to go through them and make sure that I’m tracking them correctly on Goodreads. One of my long term goals is reducing the number of unread and owned books, so tracking them in detail really helps me. But since I’m in the process of moving, some things are up in the air. So this will be a bonus.

Well I guess looking at this project as two main goals (with a bonus) makes it seem like not that big of a project. I think goal #1 will take some thought though haha. I’m excited for this! I love organizing things, and I think completing these goals will really help me, and make me feel good. Have you thought about organizing your Goodreads shelves? Or cleaning up/organizing anything else in your bookish life? Let me know if you’re also doing Shealea’s challenge!

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