Tagged: clutter

The Spare Room

Last night, in an organizational fit, I re-arranged the spare room.

Because of the layout of our apartment, her clothes are in the closet in the bedroom and my clothes are in the closet in the spare room. The spare room also has a tv (that isn’t even plugged in anymore) and a futon (nobody our age should own a futon). I have a little book case instead of a dresser because I’ve been putting off getting new furniture until we get a real place. There are hooks on the closet door for hanging some of my stuff.

I end up using the room as a giant laundry hamper. I just dump clothes all over the place. Sweaty tees, shoes, bags. If you wanted to put the drying rack in there and hang some laundry, you’d have a hard time finding space for it. If you wanted to sit down and read, you’d have a hard time doing that too. In addition to the organizational issues, the lighting in that room is not so good. So there are a lot of issues in this room and I was hoping that when we moved moving would sort them out. But now we’re not moving.

So I moved things around. It’ll be easier to read. I relocated a bunch of my crap to some recently opened shelving in another room, so I have less junk strewn about in the room. On it’s own, this isn’t going to solve all the problems. As with so many things, the problem is internal. The problem is me. The solution isn’t re-arranging the room, the solution is resolving to pick things up and put them away.

Some Thoughts on eBooks and Dead Trees

I’ve had a nook since they first came out, which was about two years ago. I still like the nook, and I still like dead tree books, though for different reasons.

There are two big reasons I like ebooks. Probably the biggest is just the physical space that ebooks don’t take up. In a year I will go through 20 books. That will fill up my bookshelves very quickly. It’s easy to run out of room. Suddenly I have a new problem, which is how to get rid of the books I can’t keep. Usually I donate them to the library. But with ebooks, this isn’t a problem.

The other reason I like ebooks is that a lot of the books I read are more than 600 pages. I’m pretty mobile, and carrying around something that weighs a couple of pounds and takes up more space than my shoes is kind of difficult. The nook is small and light.

That said, there are a lot of things I prefer about dead tree books. I still like the feel of paper. I like looking at the cover every time I open and close the book. I can’t tell you very many of the authors of the ebooks I’ve read- you just don’t see the name over and over again the way you do when you see the cover twice a reading.

While I mentioned that I appreciate that ebooks take up zero physical space, this can also be a bad thing. Dead tree books look nice lined up on a bookshelf; ebooks don’t look like anything. In a way dead tree books can be decorative, can add character and expression to your living spaces.