Finding their place.

I have been listening to the Harry Potter audiobooks as read by Stephen Fry. But in doing so, I find that when I’m not working on some project, I’m staring at my closet full of books. Of course my mind muses on even better and cleaner organizing within, but it also has caused me to want to pair down even more.

This time it’s not so much to get rid of more, as these are the books I’ve yet to read. Rather, I'd like to remove the ones that just aren’t screaming out to my psyche to be read at the moment. I mean, there are so many I really want to read – likely over a hundred I’m pining to dive into and devour – that storing the others elsewhere for a while might be a wise idea. The idea being to clean out the clutter and feel less overwhelmed with the amount of upcoming reads.

I use the term clutter loosely, because if anything in my life is organized, it’s my books. There’s just too many of them in a small space, but they are ordered – OH, are they ordered! When I feel that my life is getting out of control, I go and reorganize my books. I must feel in that moment that at least in that action, with my books, I have control. It’s a bit like John Cusack’s character with his albums in High Fidelity, only my ordering curricula are quite different.

I mentioned that these are just the books I’ve yet to read, my already read books being in storage. See, because I was in a crisis mode for several years, I went about collecting all the books from the Official Rory Gilmore Book List. That alone is about 120 books. But along the way, there were books that I heard about, read about, or randomly picked up that I discovered I wanted. So getting those, receiving other books as gifts, and then starting yet another book list, BBC’s The Big Read Top 100, I have several hundred books in my closet that are to be read.

Yes, I said in my closet. My clothes have been relegated to a tiny armoire so that my books have space to breathe. The doors are off, and the closet is completely shelved. Yet still, somehow, I have them stacked on top of the neatly shelved books. Neat piles on neat rows. What am I to do?

What’s most frustrating is that lusting I mentioned earlier – that desire to simply devour a title I see right there on my shelf. I think this is why I’ve undertaken so many at once – I just want to read them all NOW so I end up entrenched is eight titles at the same time. I want to pick it up, read it right there in a short time, and then grab the next one. I know it’s illogical, and frankly impossible, but it’s the longing to know and understand each one that grips me.

Every day I consider how I’m going to get these volumes, even the ones I most want to consume, with me when I move to Europe. I finally got the opportunity for the first time this weekend to try a Kindle by Amazon. It was indeed convenient, and compact when you think that you can have a library right there… but the problem is that I already have these hundreds of books I want to read. Why would I re-buy them for that gadget? It just doesn’t work for me. So I keep pondering.

I think it comes down to the fact that it was really unwise for me to do all that collecting in those years of trauma recovery. But it can’t be changed, so I need… a bag that’s bigger on the inside and really strong muscles. Since I haven’t yet read the books on physics to figure out how to do the first bit of that (nor have I met The Doctor, as I’ve long hoped for, who could do that for me), I welcome any and all suggestions…

You can't take it with you.

“My idea of the ultimate luxury is to be able to move all my worldly goods in one taxi.”

This, one of my favorite quotes, is from a British TV series (Murphy’s Law). Though I’d thought like this for years, I’d never put it so well. Actually, until this show I hadn’t really known there were other people, even fictional ones, out there that thought like me in this way.

Having said this, it’s likely apparent that I’ve not been a big saver of things, and am, in fact, excessively sparing compared to most Americans. Because of my desire to live abroad and travel the world, I’ve attempted to keep the ever-building amalgam of collected paraphernalia to a minimum. (Of course, being a compulsive organizer contributes to the constant downgrading as well.)

Yet the mass makes headway. Like when I took up triathlons. The equipment and wears add quite a bit. Or my growing collection of luggage and travel gear. Meant to help me keep things to a minimum, or at least to keep them quite small, these little items add up and take up space. Or my high quality kitchen items that have accumulated during my more domestic moments.

Most of all, it’s my books. It is the one collection with which I just can’t seem to part. I’m ever torn between wanting to be free of the encumbrance of mass quantities of stuff, to adoring the library I’ve taken a lifetime to build up. How can I reconcile this? I get advice spanning the spectrum. Yet my core is still torn asunder.

What’s worse with the books is that, because I was in a non-productive space both mentally and physically for the last few years, I indulged in collecting easily over 300 books I’m longing to read. What do I do with them as I prepare to move abroad? How do I keep up with them? When living in Italy, I used to send the books I’d read home to my parents. Do I keep that practice up? Am I then spending the same as if I bought them again? It’s my constant conundrum.

As to the “memory items” that fill up closets, garages, and storage sheds all over this vast country, I’ve been good about ridding myself of such things. If it still holds personal value and I can, I’ll scan or take a snap of it then free myself of it. But mostly it just goes. This is perhaps easier because I don’t have a family of my own. If one day I do, my kids will likely be grateful not to have to sort through my life in objects and paperwork.

Now when it comes to things from my ancestral past, I truly treasure the connections to those that have gone before. I would like to hold onto a few things from them. My grandad’s old stand-up radio that he brought to California from Nebraska as a surprise, the rocking chair my great-grandfather built, the painting my great-grandmother created… those things I will cherish whether they take up space or not. And the photos, of course. But the rest I can leave behind.

All this said, I do still love to have things. I’m not all that abstemious. Nice things feel good. I just want to keep them in proportion. Especially since so much of it is going to be in storage very soon. And, too, I don’t want to have things just to have them – I’d like them to be useful as well as nice. Form and function together is ideal. And always, always, always I must remind myself that in my case, less really is more.

If I try to stick with this, then perhaps I can live something close to that quote. That is, so long as there is a bike rack on the back of that taxi…