Bedtime Routine
What is your pre-sleep routine?
In my case, it is reading, which I introduced in “I prefer paper books” About 30 minutes after I start reading, I just need to get myself to sleep.
Assuming that my reading speed is about 500 words per minute, I finish a book of 100,000 words in about 200 minutes, which means that I buy about four to five new books every month.
Since the average price of a new book is between 800 yen and 1,300 yen, I spend 6,500 yen per month, or 78,000 yen per year, on his evening routine.
When I find an interesting book at a bookstore, I buy it, forgetting about the price, but when I calmly calculate the cost, it is quite a lot of money.
Another headache is the lack of space to put books away.
The books that don’t fit on the IKEA bookcase Billy have already been piled up on the floor, and they are cramping our small house.
To Save A.R.E.
“Can’t you do something about this?”
This, of course, refers to the “tower of books” piled up on the floor, not to the thing “A.R.E.” that won the 2023 You-Can New Word of the Year award.
“I don’t have room for it now, but I have a plan to get rid of it in the future.”
“I go to Book-Off, but they bring it back, and I don’t want to sell it on Mercury, so what are you going to do?”
It would do a lot of psychological damage to have past blunders rehashed, so the only thing to do here is to somehow fake it and smoke it out.
“Sure, we no longer have room to stack A.R.E. flat on the floor, but we could make use of the dead space on the top side, couldn’t we?”
“For example, we can install IKEA’s BERGSHULT (80cm x 30cm) shelves with GRANHULT (20cm x 12cm) brackets in the upper space of a TV board or a chest of drawers.”
“It’s a good idea, but you can’t put many books on it, and it’s dangerous if it falls down during an earthquake!”
She is a terrible woman who instantly dismisses the solution inspired by the “Up, Up, Up” commercial for Panasonic Homes’ multi-story “Vieuno“ residence.
“Either way, you can’t add any more books to your collection, so you’ll have to decide whether to hold off on buying any more or get rid of them!”
It wasn’t like Soichiro Tahara on “Live TV till Morning!”, but she was pressing me to make a yes or no choice in rapid succession.
I’ve been bombarded with petty criticism every time I’ve had to clean up, and I’ve been fooled into thinking that “I want to protect my books like they’re employed for life!” but I have reached my limit.
I guess she wants “drastic measures“ as Prime Minister Kishida explained about the LDP’s factional and financial problems.
E-book project launched
Failure to add more books means giving up the bedtime routine of reading.
Not to paraphrase a line from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, my answer is “No! No! No!“.
With no stone mask o-part to evolve into a super life form, I don’t want to be unable to sleep at night.
I have no choice but to introduce an “e-book project” that we have been secretly considering for the past three years.
The two choices for tablet devices would be the Apple iPad mini and the Amazon Kindle paper white.
The priorities for purchase will be weight, operating time, and price, which can be held in one hand.
First of all, iPad mini weighs 293g and Kindle paper white weighs 205g.
100g is a big difference since the tablet is held in one’s hand like a smartphone.
The iPad mini has 17 hours of operation time, and the Kindle paper white has about 10 weeks.
The fact that it can run for several weeks on a single charge is good news for me, as I am sick and tired of charging multiple digital devices every day.
Finally, the price, the iPad mini is about five times more expensive than the Kindle paper white.
Tablet devices evolve in performance every three to four years, so 20,000 yen is appropriate considering the periodic replacement in the future.
For these reasons, I decided to purchase Kindle paper while.
I also signed up for the “kindle unlimited” service, which allows me to read more than 2 million e-books for 980 yen per month, since I don’t need to stick to new books.
When I actually tried Kindle paper white, I found that I could read comfortably without eye fatigue.
Thanks to the unlimited reading service, I enjoy discovering books in genres that I would not normally buy.
Innovation seems to happen with a “sudden flash of inspiration,” and the first step of DX in my home is a small change that we have arrived at after a long period of offensive and defensive measures.
