Right now, one of the most solvable problems in my life is the bags of books on the floor of my bedroom.
I took all the books off the shelf in my bedroom in order to move it, and the attached desk, so I could put in another shelving unit for all my arts’n’crafts stuff. Putting them back on would give me back enough damn floorspace to get the ironing board out, which I need to do to finish any of the 20-odd sewing projects I have on the go.
There are an awful lot of decisions to make in shelving even a small number of books. Most of the space is hard to access. Which books are important enough to keep close at hand? (My dressmaking reference book, for sure- it is one of the few to have already made it on to the shelf, next to a folder of patterns.) Which books will be relegated to the second layer, as some must be? (These will be the books I can’t bear to either look at or throw away.) What will I find that I no longer have room for? (And how long will those books stay in a different bag, on another part of the floor, until I finally get the push to take them somewhere else?)
Making these decisions is tiring, because books become a proxy for parts of the self. All objects do, but I think the density of information in books gives them a special sort of gravity- or perhaps this a genetic weakness, since my parents also struggle to control the spread of books through a house. Self-reflection is uncomfortable, and making myself aware that I need to do it isn’t the same thing as actually doing the task I need to do, but at least it’s a step towards it.
“having written 300 words, I can take a nap guilt-free and put the actual solving of the problem off for another day” – unnamed local idiot