Shelfish Thoughts - Fun Monday

Today's fun Monday assignment - brought to you by Swamp Witch is to show our book shelves or any other shelves - but not to clean or organize them - just show the real thing. I think she wants us to reveal all our ugly little secrets - one is supposed to be able to read the titles of the books in the picture, but of course I have so many bookcases of books that this would be a sad blog if all I did was show images of the thousands of tomes in our house. If its a classic we probably have it, or if it is about JFK, is a murder mystery by John Dickson Carr or is a paperback about a mass murderer or conspiracy. Instead of showing rows of boring books, I am going to show representative shelves.

To start off, here is a shelf in our living room. The decor is light yellow and royal blue, so these shelves help establish the color scheme. My sister, Mindy, gave me the monkey for Christmas. He screams when you press his foot. So do I. The shelves contain the cook books, plant books and home improvement books, essentially the books I never use anymore since I've given up cooking or ever having an improved home! I still plant things every year, because I kill plants every year. The books don't really seem to help.



These shelves can be found to the left of my computer in my work room. They house the weaving books and toys. You'll see Japanese wooden dolls, the Lost in Space Robot and Kwan Yin on those shelves between giant plastic spiders and Buffy action figures. The shelves are cluttered and show the true state of my mind. No doubt the blog should end here as these shelves epitomize the essence of my being.



Here are shelves from the room I call the library. it is a huge cavernous and dark chamber in the basement, where I house the classics. You'll find Plato's cave, The Bacchae, Wuthering Heights and Mansfield Park all together down there along with all kinds of historical books, and great English literature. (Most of my German and French literature is in my office.) Those are cat figures on top of the book shelves. We have quite a collection between the two of us.



Some of the philosphers are in this case that has a few of my skeleton toys on top. The paintings are by my mother Lynn.



I can go on endlessly. The library has unending shelves on three walls and there are also book shelves in the two other downstairs room and a whole wall of shelves in the living room that I photographed but have not shown. They all look pretty much the same!

What else could Swamp Witch want to see? The Pantry? Hmmm. My husband has been organizing down there - so things are pretty orderly. I think he is reliving childhood glories by trying to set up a fall-out shelter type environment. I'm not sure, but I think I"d prefer radiation poisoning to having to eat all those canned beans and water chestnuts, still if that is what makes a house a home, then bring on the C rations and bottled water!



This set of shelves is above the kitchen work area. You can see the ubiquitous Lord of the Ring Action figures which over flow all rooms and closets. They keep hoping to find their way back to Hobbiton, but so far they are imprisoned in the Modor of our closets and shelf tops! Every once in a while a hobbit kamikazes down on me from the shelves, but I always capture him and replace him on Mount Doom, poor thing!

After taking the above picture I was a bit appalled by the excess of stuff in the cabinet,so even though it was against the rules, I cleaned it out and threw out a grocery bag full of 20 year old tea and chocolates left over from Christmas/Holiday before last. Even with the reduction in stuff, there was no more space in the cabinet. Like housework (which always expands to fill whatever time one has available) the contents of cabinets swell to fit the space available minus 1/3.



My mother-in-law is coming to visit this week - I hope I can keep this one little part of my life clean until she arrives and then force her to notice the only clean area in the house!