Friday, November 02, 2007

A Day Spent De-cluttering

Spent much of the day de-cluttering the house.I love that feeling. It's like making way for something new. Went through all the old coats, boots and other winter-wear. Went through my youngest daughter's closet and two dressers and all the little nooks and crannies where she had stashed bags inside of inside of bags filled with her treasures. Lots and lots of treasures.She even has a drawer that she forbade me from discarding any of the contents. And she means it. She wants her children to go through that drawer someday and be able to see the kind of things she was interested in when she was a kid herself. Her daddy has the same kind of drawer back at his mom's house.

Two days ago I went on this organizing-my-books rampage and if you know me at all that is not an easy or simple undertaking. Especially since I started it after dinner on a weeknight. I was done by 11:00-ish. I had stacks of books all over the house as I categorized them by books read and unread, fiction vs. non, and I even alphabetized them. That ended up being quite interesting as I noticed which writers I had many books by: Antonya Nelson, Ron Carlson, Carol Shields to name a few. There's a bookshelf in my office that is filled with writing books that I divided into categories such as: writers on writing, women writers, prompts and exercises, the craft of fiction, motivation, inspiration, creativity and fiction that I read over and over to learn to write like they do.

Now I gaze at my bookshelves all so neat and organized and I feel this immense satisfaction and this warmth of being surrounded by old friends. And also this: this creeping sense of guilt that I really, really (and I mean seriously) have no business buying anymore books until I read the over four hundred that now line my tidy little bookshelves unread.

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