When I saw this picture on Jon Acuff’s Pinterest, I thought it was about decluttering. I clicked because I am all about minimizing our stuff and thought, “Cool, a challenge to empty a shelf and get rid of stuff.” To my happy surprise, this was not a decluttering challenge, but a challenge to fill your mind. This challenge is about emptying off a shelf and filling it with books that you read this year. I don’t usually need any kind of challenge to get me to read, but I enjoy having a challenge that I feel like I can easily keep up with (I might be the kind of person who writes things I have already done on my To Do list just so I can check them off. Don’t judge). You can read about the challenge on Jon Acuff’s blog.

I was already in the middle of a book when I saw this challenge. I finished Perfect by Henry Krauss, M.D. the next day. Book #1 added to my shelf before I even had an empty shelf to start with!

Since then, I have found a small shelf (that I will probably fill several times) to be my empty shelf. I added two more books this week by skipping naps and staying up too late (oops). Deeper Water and Higher Hope by Robert Whitlow.

The other day, I decided that I needed to reorganize my kids’ books because they were all over the place. I emptied off the shelves and sorted. Before I put any of them back, I realized how many of them we hadn’t read yet or hadn’t read in awhile. So, I decided to join the Empty Shelf Challenge for them too.

I lined up all of their books on the fireplace, and as we read them, we will add them to their empty shelves. With the way they like to read books, it shouldn’t take us the whole year to get through them.

In fact, right away we added four books back to the shelf.

I hope you decide to join this challenge too! Let us know in the comments if you are participating.