Last night I finished cleaning and decluttering my library. It took me a good two weeks to clear everything off the floor and find a place for it. All books now occupy their proper place on the shelves which only became possible after I weeded my collection. This weeding is still a work in progress, as I have other shelves which are not in my library room which I want to reassess. With few exceptions I donated all of my weeded books to the library’s ongoing book sale, and it is an ego boost to know that most of these books have sold. The language books amazingly have found buyers; I suppose there are other language nerds like me in Mississauga.

Nothing is on my Scrabble rug. Piles of books which had been accumulating on my floor over the past four years are filed away. Newly assembled photo albums are no longer strewn across my floor. My computer desk is still in a state of mid-declutter. I have to go through a pile of stuff to the right of my monitor. The stuff under my budgie calendar is my work in progress, so I keep it nearby. 

I am shopping for new blinds for my entire house. In order to get them fitted, I naturally had to free up the space in front of my windows. Since I hate the destructive power sunlight has in fading the spines of books, several years ago in a move that I readily admit was like cutting my bibliophilic nose off to spite my face, in one frustrated afternoon I rearranged my bookshelves so that three of them stood in front of one of my library windows. Damn you, sunlight! You are powerless! I realize that instead of blocking off one of my windows I should have instead considered looking into buying new blinds. When I moved into my house seventeen years ago, it was new–less than a year old–and I was reluctant to start tearing things out that I didn’t like. I have always hated the blinds that the previous owner had chosen. They are mostly horizontal slat blinds (as you see in the photos) but there are some vertical blinds in my living room. I am now at the stage where I want to furnish my home with the blinds I have always wanted, and I expect to get them within three weeks (so stay tuned for more house pictures). That said, I knew that as long as my bookshelves were blocking one of my library windows I was never going to get new blinds. I had to move the shelves and that was one reason for my two-week concentration on finally cleaning and decluttering my library, as there was no way I could move any bookshelf across my floor when it had so much stuff piled all over it. My right forearm has the bruises to show for it: I have been moving all this furniture by myself–seeing as I did move it in front of the window all by myself in the first place–and bracing my body against the weight of it all took a toll on my right arm. It does look black-and-blue. I plan to get blackout blinds and will have them fitted so that they do not allow any light gaps. They will go in my library and two other bedrooms. My living room, kitchen and other rooms do not need either to have blackout blinds nor to have anti-light gap fitting. 

I can stand in my library now and enjoy all the space. There are still small piles of clutter around, but I am not ashamed to show off my library, once again. 

Scrabble rug with various Scrabble games (both English and international sets) and Scrabble paraphernalia on the left; bookshelf housing mainly fiction, art, gay literature and beat literature on the right.

These blinds will soon be history. A better look at my Scrabble games on the right; bookshelf housing mainly the Helen Hooven Santmyer oeuvre, autographed editions, books from North Korea, my Le Petit Prince collection and all oversize books on the left.

My computer desk now next to a window. Various English dictionaries on the top of the desk.

These three bookshelves house my language collection: Finnish, Romansch and Breton, which are the most recent languages I have studied, plus French and German and all other languages. I also have other books which I picked up from my travels shelved here.

My Tristan da Cunha water bottle and autographed photo of Luise Rainer