A Clean Sweep

This week, the library is working on inventory and weeding.  It’s fairly tedious library work, scanning every single book and double checking its place in the collection, but also somewhat rewarding.  The library that I’m working in hasn’t had a book removed from it for years, since 2008 I believe.  Librarians know that things get accumulated during those times.  Librarians may also know that without any oversight on purchasing or selection, the library ends up as a repository for all the things that will never be checked out.

I find the process immensely satisfying.  To remove the dusty, underused books from the collection to be able to see the fresher, newer, better books provides me with such mental clarity and peace.  Perhaps that’s nerdy.  I don’t mind.  I need a bit of nerdy since my librarian glasses are permanently removed.

It’s amazing to me what the people around us begin to care about when it may not be available anymore.  A book, left unused and unloved for years, suddenly becomes the best, most special book in all the land.  I doubted Mary Kay Biagini when she talked about this in library school, but I’m beginning to see just how crushing it is to lose these sentimental things called books.

I’m sitting here, thinking about the week, and the discussions I’ve had.  I’m ruminating about the massive amount of time my colleagues and I have spent pouring over texts and deciding their fate.  The dusty, the unused, the graphic (lots of boobs), all will need to find a new home.

There was this show that used to be on TLC before that channel became reality show nonsense, and I loved it.  It was called Clean Sweep.  Their goal was to take one of those spare rooms that houses had, ones that were full of… whatever… and turn it into a usable space.  In order to accomplish this gorgeous new room, the staff took all the belongings in the room, put it on a big tarp in the front yard, and gave them an equally large tarp for “garage sale” as well as a tiny tarp for “keep”. The counselors, or hosts, or whatever, would talk them through this, and I remember some of the phrases at play…

What have you used this for in the past couple of years?

Does this really add value to your life?

Why are you keeping this thing in this room if it really is so important to you?

I found myself thinking about this show because it’s what we’re doing with the library… giving it a clean sweep.  I also find myself thinking about it in terms of my own personal belongings and possessions.  I came to Thailand with a couple suitcases.  Before that, I destroyed my mom’s basement getting rid of stuff that I hadn’t touched for years.  With my photos, my music, I’ve done the same. 

In this age of overload,  I want to clean up my spaces and make sure that the only things in there are things that I can pick up and enjoy and love with a moment’s notice.  I don’t want to sift through 15 albums I feel neutral about before I find one song I love.  I don’t want to have to pick through 30 versions of the same photo before I find one that I like.  I want all the best, right now.

This is my goal at the moment, finding the simple life and enjoying what I have.  And the library is my current show of that goal.