Digression on Closets, Books, and Digital Archives

Okay this has nothing really to do with Keegan but it was driving me batty yesterday. In general I tend to be a very organized person; not maybe the neatest person in the world, but I am organized. Everything has its appropriate place. An example of the difference between neatness and organization is my desk at home. I know exactly where everything is on my desk; even though the "in" box is a huge messy stack of papers on one corner of the desk.

There are 3 areas where I have major neatness issues. These three things drive me crazy and are strangely interlaced with things that make me happy. The closet is the first area, the "library" is the second, and our online music catalog is the third.

The closet has always been a perpetual nightmare for me. When Lyle and I lived in Cottage Grove we had all of our stuff in a closet that was smaller than the one I had at my parent's house, it was horrible. When we moved to our new house in Blaine we finally had a huge closet. Lyle uses about 1/16th of the closet; I use the rest. I remember thinking that my closet problems were over when we moved here. I remember Lyle joking "remember you don't *have* to fill all of this space up". Well thanks to a pregnancy and post pregnancy pudge my nightmare has returned. I had two trash bags full of cloths that didn't fit while I was pregnant. Now I have one trash bag full of cloths that still don't fit (mostly they were pretty tight when I got pregnant) and a bag full of maternity cloths. It is a nightmare. A few weeks ago I went and unpacked all of the cloths that I determined will at some point fit again. These are now stacked along the walls of the closet because there isn't enough room to hang them up with all of the other cloths I bought because I didn't have enough cloths because I hadn't unpacked my pre-maternity cloths after I had Keegan. There are cloths and shoes everywhere. You can't move around the closet...all of the mess is mine.

Unfortunately at the root of this closet issue is a pure pleasure of mine. I *love* buying cloths. I probably buy at least one new item of clothing every other week. T-shirts, skirts, dresses, you name it; if I find it on clearance, and I like it, I will buy it. It gives me a high and a warm feeling of happiness. Luckily I have never gone to the extent that my habit is a financial burden (lyle may disagree with this statement), but it is a space problem. I also become emotionally attached to my clothing. I still have the shirt I wore on my first date with Lyle. I can tell emotionally important events or places where I have worn most of my clothing; I can tell you where I bought each item of clothing and how much I paid for it. How much of my mind is occupied by this useless knowledge I shudder to contemplate. I could probably have pi memorized out to a million places instead of knowing the exact details of each piece of clothing I own; the usefulness of either type of knowledge is dubious. When you couple my love for clothing variation with a keen sense of loss when I get rid of clothing it results in lots of trouble and lots of clothing.

Unfortunately the clothing/closet issue really stresses me out. I hate it when the closet is messy and I hate when I don't have enough space for my cloths.

Then there is the book issue. After cloths, books are my next greatest vice. I love books. I love owning books, I love collecting books, I love seeing books, I love the smell of books...I love books. Each book I own is precious. I can tell when I bought the book, and during what time of my life I read the book. I can tell you what other books the author wrote and how many books are in the series. I can give you a brief synopsis of the book. But, I cannot under any circumstance throw away the book. I have started getting better about re-selling books that I didn't like or don't plan to re-read again. If I can re-sell the book I feel like I am still respecting the book and the characters in the book and moving them on to a new life. Unfortunately I read a lot of books. I probably read 4-7 books a month at least. We have a lot of books in the house. When we finished the basement a whole wall of the basement was going to be dedicated to bookshelves. Well, it is done. The book shelves are up....and they are full. There is no room to grow there. Keegan's bedroom now has a bookcase in it full of all the books that I have read that I think he would like in the future. I hope that Keegan likes to read, else I will need to come up with a different excuse to keep all of those books. This is another area that gets disorganized and stressful for me. Not nearly as bad as the closet but still a pain all the same.

Lastly is our online music. This drives me nuts. We have all of our CDs burned onto the computer. This is great because we can listen to them all over the wireless speakers that are hooked up to the computer. We have some 10 gigs of music. My Sansa (mp3 player) has 5 gigs of space. It seems like no matter what music I load onto my Sansa the music I want to listen to isn't on there. It's such a pain. I have 900 songs on my Sansa and sometimes when I am in the lab I feel like there is nothing to listen too. I have all the songs memorized and I am bored with all of them. Hopefully in the future I can upgrade and carry *all* of my music.

Anyway, I feel better now that I have shared all of my material psychosis with whoever reads this. This has nothing to do with Keegan except in the most roundabout of ways. Hopefully this was at least amusing to read if nothing else. I hope that you are all having a great day. Back to work for me.