Space: The Final Frontier

It's no secret that, as a family, we like books. We have our own darn library. We also have three large cherry bookcases that Eric and I bought in our first year of marriage. When I say large, I mean 7' tall, and about 3 1/2' wide and deep. The depth has been an issue for me in the last several years. Clutter has also been an issue. I come from two long lines of savers, and I have a lot of odds and ends that have been in the family for three or four generations. Most of it is not stuff that I'm particularly attached to; I just don't know what to do with it. Taking it to an antique store to try and sell it is too much for me to consider right now.

Don't ask me why I didn't think of it sooner. I was staring at the piles of books in the loft, thinking how awful it looked, and it dawned on me that the books on the cherry bookcase were pushed all the way back. I just happened to have a plastic storage box in reach, so I filled it up with my inherited oddments, pulled the books forward, and stuck it behind them. Voila! Increased storage space! In a fit of efficiency, I even got the camera and snapped a few pictures.


I was part-way into the task when I thought about taking pictures. It looked worse when I started.




















Of course, when I finished the cherry bookcase, the pine one looked even more pitiful, and I did have stacks of books just sitting around, so I kept going.













I think I might be on to something.

I know some of you are thinking, "Oh, that's brilliant. Yeah, the stuff is put away, but now you're going to forget where it is."

That's probably true, but hopefully this post will be a trail of breadcrumbs for me. Besides, it's all in the same room it was in originally.

Regardless of future consequences, I'm rather pleased with myself and may even look at doing this with the downstairs book cases.