I love summer. I love the haze, the heat, the humidity, the long days and the evenings spent half-watching baseball on the tv while catching up on fun reading. I don't know why I don't seem to have as much free time in the winter--my schedule stays the same--maybe it's just that time seems to move more slowly in the heat, and that I change my priorities from "clean kitchen floor" to "inflate whale-shaped baby pool complete with spout, fix lemonade, and hang with the family."
It also helps that Hublet is a school teacher and has summers off, so my share of things like cooking, cleaning, yardwork, grocery shopping, etc, is greatly diminished. I still do the laundry, though. Long story short: it's just better that way. Of course, Hublet being Hublet, he tends to embark on projects that stimulate his creativity and intellect, but that don't necessarily aid in the "getting daily crap done" aspects of home maintenance.
This year, we have decided to Clean Out The House and put unnecessary stuff in storage. When you have two ex-english majors in one house, books tend to be everywhere, and frankly one copy of The Riverside Shakespeare in hardcover takes up quite enough space without its twin. So, we dutifully went to Target and purchased storage bins. Hublet's one job this week? Sort the books and get them out of the guestroom so that my folks will have a place to sleep when they come down on Thursday.
To an average person, this task is straightforward: Take books off extra bookshelf that's been cluttering guestroom since October, shove books in bins, load truck with bins and bookcase, tote to storage, unload truck, come home, vacuum. But Hublet is not an average person. And so I arrived home yesterday to find that the guestroom had suffered a literary explosion, with little stacks of books on every available surface with the exception of the still-empty storage bins. Hublet had his last softball game of the year yesterday, so I didn't have time to inquire about the piles of print, but when we arrived home (after a fabulous 3-run homer hit by Hublet while The Boy and I were enjoying the amenities of the public restroom) he disappeared into the guestroom and emerged a few minutes later with several ink-stained sheets in hand.
"I need to know how much you pay a typist per word," he began, and it took me a minute to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
"Wait. What's your plan?"
"Well, I've created this system for all our books. They've been cross-referenced and indexed and numbered, see? And the number corresponds to the bin, and will go on the bin label, and I just need someone to put all this into an Excel spreadsheet so when we need a particular book we just look it up and Voila! We know exactly what we've got and where to find it!" He waved the papers triumphantly.
"I can do the data entry, I mean, how long could that take?" Then I looked at what he held. Dear GOD we have a lot of books, not counting the ones in the den, the ones used as decor, the ones in the bedroom, the ones in both bathrooms (what, you don't have a bookcase in your bathroom?) the ones still on the other bookshelf in the guestroom, the three bins of books in the guestroom closet, AND the 5 or 6 boxes of books in the attic.
"And I need you to rank these in order of importance--how likely are you to reread them? And also, did you forget about these?" He hands me a list of books I had purchased over the years and put aside to read "later" and forgotten about.
"Umm, dear? How likely are we to have an inhabitable guestroom by Thursday?" Mentally I was making my own "To-do" list: vacuum, dust, clean out refrigerator, mop, wash dog, brush and de-worm cat, put away laundry, hang picture, change bedding, clean bathrooms, sweep porch, water flowers....because I suddenly realized I'd have no help from Hublet's quarter while he was enmeshed in what has become The Great Summer Project of Ought-Four. He dismissed my concerns with a smile, an airy wave and a "Don't worry!" and then disappeared back into the guestroom.
The good news? I'll finally get to finish reading Simon Schama. The better news? It's just books, not an entire storage room of stuff to go through. Of course, my parents will probably be sleeping on the pull-out sofa this weekend. I wonder if there's an Organizers Anonymous chapter nearby?
A few years ago, my husband and I finally agreed to go through and weed our books and not to keep both our copies of everything. Generally this meant my copy had to go, because I was a few years ahead and he almost always had the more current edition. There were a few things that neither of us would part with though.
And after weeding, we went through and organized the main bookshelves into categories like British Lit and Am. Lit. (in chronological order) and then my German Lit., a reference section, a philosphy and religion section, a history section, and a really old books that have to be high enough that the kids can't reach them for ten more years section, etc. I thought that was bad enough for a former librarian to do to her own collection. Even I am not about to start cataloging all these books, nor am I going to bother organizing the kids' books or my personal collection of fluff reading.
So kudos to your hublet for making me feel less anal about my book collection.
Posted by: Jordana at June 22, 2004 11:17 AMMy system is simple: college textbooks/reference texts go in the study (floor-to-ceiling bookcases), 'fun' books (my Clancy hardcovers are one set) go in the family room (again, floor-to-ceiling), and my science fiction collection is in labeled boxes, alpha by author, stored in the unfinished room above our garange on utility shelving. Everything else goes in a box to get taken to the book resale shop, or given to my mother (she reads 3-5 books a week, a mix of murder mysteries and historical non-fiction) who reads it and then puts it in HER resale/exchange box. My 8-year-old daughter's books are sent to her younger cousins when she outgrows them - I just cleaned out her bookshelf last month, and found she was reading 4 different books at once, which is pretty surprising for a kid but pretty typical in our bookworm family.
Now the rest of my house is a total dusty, clutered mess, but the books are organized......
Posted by: Claire at June 22, 2004 02:39 PMStarted to chuckle over the bookcases in the bathrooms....
Then I started thinking about my house.
We have two bookcases in the living room - one for the kids and one for the adults.
Hubbie has his work-related books (he's a computer p.m. and is changing jobs soon) all over & under the kitchen table and chairs.
Each son has crammed books in their nightstands and headboards.
We have books stacked up along the wall in the master bedroom.
And that doesn't even touch my boxes of teaching books, kids books that aren't out, paperbacks, etc. One third of our spare room (which is 450+ sq. ft.) is full of boxes of books.
And, yes, I was geeky enough once upon a time to organize a database of all my teaching and children's books.
The database was useful for about 6 months and then I had to reorganize to make room for the new books.
Tell hublet to get clear sided containers so you can see the books cuz it really ticks you off when your organization attempt flies out the window when you find that new text on qualitative analyses that you just gotta have.... ;)
Posted by: di at June 22, 2004 05:18 PMThe only problem here is the parents, it seems to me. Tell them not to come. It only creates a crisis where there isn't one.
Posted by: Ron Hardin at June 22, 2004 07:41 PMOh geez, I'm feeling your hublet's pain as well as your own. My daughter has to read " The House of Seven Gables" for summer reading and I know that I own at least 4 copies of it. Yet, I can't remember which bin, room, attic, storage container it is in. So, rather that go spend hours of time, I go to Amazon and buy a used copy for $1.47 and it will be in her hands within the week. It will be her own copy, in her own hands to love, cherish and forever store for the rest of her life.
Posted by: Marie at June 23, 2004 08:58 PMIf he runs out of things to do, send him to my house. I'm not an English Major, but a geek who loves to read anything and everything, and has more books than room, including books going all the way back to when I was in high school, and then there are my son's books, he is 11 and we still have the picture books I read with him when he was a baby. OY!! I feel the pain.. Each one is like a friend, too hard to part with.
Love your diary BTW!!
Posted by: Holly at June 25, 2004 02:59 PMI recently weeded through my books, giving away many paperbacks that I read once and didn't plan to read again, and so on. Of course, my nefarious plan was simply to make room for more books.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at June 26, 2004 11:55 PM