I know I’ve said no one can have too many books. And I mean that, if you have enough space in your hemisphere. If, like me, that space has now run out, and the tottering stacks could fall and kill a ferret, it’s time to think up new solutions. Naturally, getting rid of books is a good solution. Not the one I’d want to use, but a good solution. Hardcovers are hanging around with no intrinsic value. Not books I intend to read despite my fervent initial intentions, the inscriptions enclosed are all that holds them here. So, off they must go, to nursing homes, libraries, and hair dressers.
Ok, with those out of the way, is my bedroom safe for the furry little creatures? No. Because those books resided downstairs. The books I intend to read someday, before death, are piled, cascading, and flat dab on the floor, subject to ferret bite, and other sundry activities we won’t go into. Did I mention that within my bedroom I keep my 4 ferrets? They have a condo of a cage they sleep in at night, but during the day when I’m away they dance, run, jump, and knock whatever they can over, down, and under the bed. If particularly ambitious, they will carry a paperback to a hidden spot–the far corner of the closet, under the Grandmother clock, wedged in between the side table and the next pile of books. It can take quite some time to locate a particular title in my room. Well, I can’t blame the ferrets for that, books run amok in my room with no rhyme or reason as to their positioning.
What I need is some kind of concise, sleek, custom design. I could have bookshelves as wardrobes, when opened, all my titles could be alphabetized and properly aligned. The piles would disappear, the ferrets safe, and the chaos a thing of the past. Of course, I’d need to reconfigure where the clothes, shoes, and accessories would be housed, because frankly, there would be no room for these things if books, all the books, were in cabinets. My books outnumber outfits by 3 to 1. Shoes–10 to 1. Maybe my accessories such as jewelry almost equals books, but they are smaller and easier to store. However, there must be some way this could work.
My bedroom size is a product of the 50s, meaning, before the House and Garden network redefined what a house should look like. There are no granite countertops, master bathrooms, or stainless steel appliances here, as a matter of fact, my room barely holds furniture at all. What it does hold sucks up the air and space and creates a pleasant claustrophobic atmosphere. Sure, to enter you climb over a couple of stray books in the hall, and your’e careful not to bump the books this side of the interior door, and you have to avoid stepping directly into the large water bowl on the left, while keeping from sliding and flipping on your butt because the glossy paperback pile was released while you were away. The positive here? At any given moment if stuck for a book to read, you can dip your hand down from the bed you’re relaxing on, and come up with something readable. And if the book at hand doesn’t grab you within the first paragraph, you can toss it back into the sea of titles, and plunge fingers to hook another. In my bedroom, there are always plenty of titles in the ocean of reading material. Say, maybe organizing stuff isn’t that great an idea after all.