Friday, February 27, 2009

Simplify. Simplify.

I'm not by nature a domestic person, meaning that I don't enjoy cleaning or organizing or "keeping up" a house. I just like to be in my house more than anywhere else. So I'm homebody who is completely undomestic... How did THAT happen?

But despite my natural lack of desire to organize my space, I have been inspired by Thoreau and I want to simplify my life. So I went on this big rampage in our living room and rearranged and started stripping the books from the shelves. Almost all of them I love dearly and could not possibly get rid of, but they DO need to be rearranged in some kind of sensible order. As they were, they were insanely ridiculously ordered in toppling stacks and that just doesn't seem "simplified" to me. I am still in the process of getting all the books into categories so that they can be placed back onto the shelves and right now the living room looks like a used book sale. I should (it would be completely reasonable) be able to find at least ten books to try to sell at our yard sale. Ten! How could I possibly rid myself ten beautiful little books? It will be difficult to find the ten...

Eight sounds better. I can do eight!

There. I have resolved to weed out eight of my books. It can, can, can be done! Just you wait and see.

Is it just me or does selling a good book feel like selling your friend into slavery? You can't possibly know how that book will be treated! What if it is chewed up by a dog? Or water damaged? Or worse, what if it sits in a box in someone's attic and is never read again!?

I shudder to think.