Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Rearranging the House

My husband hoards. It gets overwhelming sometimes. He's slowly getting better (as in, over the last 7 years, he's begun to see reason about things like not having a garage full of books he won't read, but he still can't let go of the pile of movie stubs going back at least 10 years), and our house is slowly getting better along with him. 

::mumblemumble:: Well, it helps that I've started cleaning house, too.  ::mumblemumble::

So the books in the garage are starting to go away, but we still have all the "House Books." Like cats, they get in the way, sit on the couch when I don't want them there, poop on the rug (well, okay, they leave dust bunnies on the shelf), and generally command attention I do not want to give them. 

Lest you think I'm an illiterate, non-reading boob, I have a degree in literature. I love books. Reasonable books. But these are books on circuitry and obsolete technology (the 3.5 Floppy Disk Will Alter Our World), old magazines, phone books, etc. Jane Austin is welcome to crap on my carpet (metaphorically). Ma Bell? Not so much.  

Our most successful foray into controlling the books to date has been two 5 x 5 Expedit bookshelves, both of which are crammed into my relatively small living room. Well, I've had an idea. I moved one of the Expedit shelves into the formal den, which currently does not house a table, and in its place, I will mount four (4) and only four (4) bracketless shelves from IKEA on that wall in the living room. 

I will find a way to make do with only four because that's how many I already have, and I'm NOT buying more.The shelves will be not quite randomly spaced, but they won't be all in a straight line. Those four shelves will house our projector (stand-in for a TV), our Wii system, our speaker system, and a blank spot for the laptop when we want to watch a movie on the projector. I'm very excited about it.

Meanwhile, of course I had to completely unload all the books and other detritus from the shelf in order to move it. So while I loaded it back up in its new home, I decided that I should at least cull my own collection of books. Well, of all the surprising and embarrassing discoveries, I only found one (1) of my husband's books on the shelf. And it was worth about $20 (he sells books online). Awkward. Now even accounting for the three shelves that our electronics occupied on this thing prior to its move, I still cleared out seven (7) shelves on this case. That were double-stacked.

Mark graciously looked up every book I set aside for its value and listed any for sale that were worth more than a few dollars. There were two, maybe three books. The rest I boxed up and took to half-price books. I got $12 for those, and then dropped off another trunkload of clothes, knick-knacks, and other random things at Goodwill.

This has inspired me to cull the other shelf now, so that's my 15-minute daily project this week. Wish me luck!

Photos to come soon! I'm excited.

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