I am reading Organizing Outside the Box by Kellen Buttigeig and Sari Brandes.

The first step in this book is a "learning styles quiz".  I turn out to be a visual learner:

Visual learners prefer keeping everything within sight but in a neat and non-distracting way. You may want to replace your filing cabinet with a literature sorter or desk top file box to store documents you need regular access to. For more organizing tips for the Visual learner, get your copy of Organizing Outside the Box: Conquer Clutter Using Your Natural Learning Style.

I'm tempted to say "I knew that" - but not how it fits in the context of decluttering. Okay, this book is intriguing: I'll read on.

the joy of less..

I'm halfway through reading the joy of less by Francine Jay - whose name I keep remembering as Felicia Day. Oh dear.

It has some fabulous advice, but it is so not written with my lifestyle in mind.  She talks about all the extra clothes in one's wardrobe - and yes, I have things I should pare down even now, but that's never been my problem. 

I've read her chapters on bedrooms and the living room - and there's a huge elephant in the room. My major stumbling block, and she hasn't even mentioned it yet.  Books.  Books and bookcases.  Where are her books?

She talks about having a bedroom that is geared only to sleeping, clothing and maybe grooming.  Not a word about books.  My bedroom problem - and we are not, for the moment, talking about the boxes of twelve thousand comic books - my bedroom problem is bookcases.  It also happens to be my living room problem.  And my hallway problem.  I have, at a quick mental count, twelve bookcases. No, thirteen, I forgot the little one by my pantry.  And I'm not counting at all the shelving over my desk, which has some books on it.  So: thirteen bookcases.  I'm hoping to get it down to four by Nov. 17.  Can I do it?

Well, maybe. "Four" is a very abstract number.  Fewer would be too much of a sacrifice. Five might be okay.  I rather like that little one by the pantry, though I don't want it to be there - and don't know where it should go.

Work in progress.  Right.  Some things reveal themselves as time goes by.

Alternate book venues:

1. They could go, with bookends, on top of my dresser and on top of my comic book boxes.  Fine for the dresser (though an uncluttered top is nice), but it renders the comic books a little more inaccessible.  Not to mention the books.

2. They could go in boxes in the basement.  I don't think it's good for them - I once had a drippy pipe down there, right over a box of comics.  It did no harm, but that's a comic collector's nightmare.

3. I could purge more. I've already purged a lot.  Yes, really.  Bookcases seem to fill up embarrassingly quickly.  And I do most of my reading from the library. There's a message in that, but I'm not sure what. If I could get all my reading from the library, I would.  Unfortunately so many of the books I need and want are not available in libraries, or electronically, either.

It's all in the musing stage, right now...

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