A Third of a Library

A Third of a Library
Originally uploaded by Hellemic.

If things around me are in chaos visually, in physical disarray or lacking a clear path or access, I become anxious. I must have been an extremely anxious youth, then, for my room growing up was always a disaster. I know now that keeping things tidy, organizing where chaos reigned for too long, I am made happy. I have always known this, but now I know to take action on it. So in this room where I like to sit, our office/library, I recently organized some of our books.

We have six floor-to-ceiling bookcases; the bottom two shelves are covered by doors and thus jampacked full. Unfortunately there is not a librarian to return things to their logical order when books are pulled for use and returned. Reshelving would have been easier if the books were pretty much organized to begin with, but they were only loosely so--itself quite a feat given the number of books we only truly realized we had when we brought them all together in this house and room. So, with a busy spring piles dominated and the hyperventilating became routine once again. One dedicated weekend I set about getting it all in order. What to others might appear a waste of precious time (several big assignments were bearing down on me), felt to me like a release. I needed to clear my head.

It is about halfway done. The cupboards remain a jumbled mess of resources and many are only half full (or a mere 1 layer deep) but I've dug through the remaining boxes enough times to know roughly where to find everything. Here you can see one-third of our "library". The other side of the room is dominated by the desk and technology. The old with the new. Welcome.

MUSIC: The solid state stereo provided aural entertainment during my organizing time. The previous owners left for us the stereo and speakers, on cute little custom built shelves under the window. So I listened to the local public radio station (classical midday), the rock station (which plays current popular hard rock songs whether they are worth listening to or not), and then Delilah on the cheesy adult soft rock station (sounds so X-rated--it's decidedly not).