Our Storage Library: Packing up the Books

When I decide I’m going to do something, I don’t like to wait to do it. My husband will think that maybe he needs to make a decision, and then he’ll think about making the decision, and then he’ll think about all the ramifications of the decision, and then investigate said ramifications online, and then, after approximately four notebooks are filled with notes, and about two years have passed, he’ll either make a decision or decide not to decide anything.

My process tends to be more along the lines of: “Maybe we should do this. Yes, we should do this. OK, let’s do this. There, it’s done.”

It lasts about forty seconds, plus whatever time it takes to get from “let’s do this” and “there, it’s done.” So while RocketMan was still sleeping a few weeks ago, I ran across the street, ransacked the storeroom of the market for boxes, and began packing up our books. (Just like I’d promised the week before.)

The library

Abierto!

By the time he woke up, most of my paperbacks were stashed, and several hours later, with me hip-deep in boxes, he mentioned that he hoped I wasn’t packing any of HIS books yet. I pointed to the shelves and said, “Those are mine. The rest are yours. Pack up.” Then we had lunch. And I took a nap. And I think I also went to the store. By that point–several hours later–he’d packed roughly a half a box.

I won’t get into the rest of the story, other than to say that after one more trip to the market’s storeroom, we did manage to pack up everything but the essentials (specifically, Harry Potters, coffee table art books, graphic novels, camping books, and a few novels). And I was disappointed by the results. I’d expected a full-on cleansing of the chi, an entirely new sunroom! Alas, we’re keeping enough books to keep filling quite a few shelves, and the handy magnet board pictured above covers up two empty shelves. But we DID make some progress, as evidenced by then ten or so boxes we filled.

We'll know which boxes have books by looking for the beer cases.

And our big shelves even got emptied, a little bit.

There are a FEW empty shelves, right?

So I can’t say we didn’t make progress. A few days ago, we even invited a friend over from SF Space Angels to get her thoughts on a Murphy bed or another kind of portable built-in. So we’ll see where we go from here. My goal this week? Get out to the storage space so I can stop looking at boxes.