Amazon.com is a wonderful site. I have been a member for years now, and continue to love their service. I can order any number of items and have them delivered right to my front door. With a houseful of kids, it’s much easier for me to click and purchase, than load ’em all up in the car and head to the store. I’d rather sip my coffee in my comfy clothes and get it all sent right to me.

So easy.

So convenient.

Unfortunately for this girl, it’s often too easy and far too convenient.

You see, I have a weakness for books. I love gathering, researching, owning and reading books. For whatever reason, it brings me great joy to buy books. I see people share the latest books they’ve read and I jump onto Amazon to read the reviews. More often than not, I order it if it catches my fancy.

I’m a sucker for a good book recommendation.

Case in point, just before typing this post, I went onto Amazon and looked at all of my orders for 2016. I scrolled through the pages and counted all of the books I purchased last year for my personal reading. To clarify, I did not count any cookbooks, school books, books gifted to others, or books for the kids to read. I simply counted how many I purchased for my own enjoyment.

Care to guess how many physical (not kindle-type) books I bought over the year?

I knew it was a lot, but it was quite eye-opening to discover the reality of my obsession.

If I counted accurately, I purchased 29 books in 2016. Twenty-nine!! Oy!!! This may not seem like a lot to some of you, but it’s A LOT for me.

To top it off, I would guess I actually completed only 4 of them. FOUR! [blush] I started many of the books, finished few, and didn’t even crack the spine of the rest.

Y’all, I spent WAY too much money last year on books to, essentially, decorate my shelves. It truly was (is) a guilty pleasure.

This 2017 year is going to be different.  I have put a hold on my spending and committed to purchasing ZERO books for myself this year. If I want to read something, I can pick up one of the books already sitting on my shelves that I ordered last year. If I really want to read a book that I do not own, I’ll borrow it from the library and read it for free. I’m brilliant, I know. haha!

I actually anticipate this no-more-purchasing-books year to be a fairly easy one. The main reason being, I was introduced to almost all of my new books via social media, and primarily through Facebook. Without being on there for the year to see any book recommendations, I won’t even know what I’m missing! YAY!

Now, to go look at my current stash and figure out what I’m going to read next …

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(For those interested, I just finished up a beautiful book titled, “The Magnolia Story” by  Chip and Joanna Gaines. What an inspiring book. I highly recommend it and so do a couple of my kids who read and enjoyed it as well! My sister recommends the audiobook version as Chip and Joanna are the ones who actually read it aloud. How fun is that?!)