I’m a way over-organizing person, currently end-in-sight to a lot of moves over the years, shedding (physical) stuff. (The digital hygiene still needs work.) So the concept of Marie Kondo, yeah, I can do that. And, plus, she seems genuinely nice.
But if I read that word “tidying” much more I think my eyeballs will start to flame.
Yet on this cloudy, chilly Friday afternoon, warm with candles and scones at home, cat in pod, sifting through about forty boxes of books, I am “tidying.”
A sofa, I can donate without nostalgia. It’s hard, though, to part with books. They’ve been so much of my personal and professional identity for many years. Some, probably, will be set alight with me when I’m cremated. But how many old literature anthologies does a person need to keep dragging around? Literature anthologies served their purpose. There is the Zoom bookcase to strategize and much more important, the real fondness and real utility for what I’m keeping, but otherwise, no mas joy (with nods to Gilmore Girls, for those who know). Out they go.
And so Jane Addams. Jane Addams, the person, was one of Illinois’ finest. I guess I assume everyone knows of her, but maybe not…she was someone I studied in elementary school…a while ago. Born wealthy, Addams pioneered the modern practice of social work, serving poor working women and their children at Hull House in Chicago, during the beginning of the first progressive era in the United States.
The Jane Addams (namesake) bookstore has been in downtown Champaign, I think, for decades. It’s not too easy to find anything exact there, but not at all hard to just get lost wandering those three or four stories of browsing. Who knows how many University of Illinois graduate students have found in that place the obscure but absolutely necessary work for a thesis or dissertation. Maybe one will pick up my unread, unmarked Clifford Geertz or Mikhail Bakhtin. (Why do I even have a copy of a Clifford Geertz or a Mikhail Bakhtin? Might/must have been required at some time. Not needed now.) I’ll keep Jurgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt and Sissela Bok, yes I will (and Anne Lamott and Sarah Vowell and Annie Dillard and Mary McCarthy and Zora Neale Hurston and Audre Lorde and Barbara Ehrenreich and yes, Thomas Piketty which yes, I am really reading…Plath and Woolf and so darn much Bloomsbury here, oh gosh, can’t stop…I need more bookcases).
So, “tidying” starts to read obnoxious but for this hyper-organizer, hyper-simplifier, feels just great. Soon my living room floor will be clear of the book boxes driving me nuts. Thanks Marie. And someone might could use the Geertz, the Bakhtin, and about twenty more book boxes. Thanks Jane.
Poor Oliver The Cat. As cats do, he likes his books, wherever they are. But as he has had to, under protest, give up the bookcases, he will too, of course not realizing where they’ve gone, give up the book boxes. He’s inventive. He’ll find something else, liking right now to fish those teeny cherubs-to-go plastic tomato container thingies out of the recycling, when he can get into. Always some cheap, sometimes definitely not cheap, new toy with that cat. Twine. Produce bags. Pens. Tape dispensers. My mouse (save from cat kill). My phone (save from cat kill). Whatever. It works (but save some things from cat kill).
And a family friend has promised to use, love, and care for my vintage Miyata bike. Another hard one to give up, but into good hands. Another family friend taking my son’s little third birthday bike. Gulp, what I had to spend on that. At the time, a chunk. But now it will be used, loved, and cared for. Thanks, family friends.
Dayna Finet 