Jaci Dawn

Hi, my name is Jaci and I have too much clutter. But I don’t have enough books. And I really don’t have enough room.

I allowed the loft to get really cluttered this summer and today I decided to do something about it. For one thing, I moved several storage boxes back into the attic (which is about 6′ wide by 10′ long by 4′ tall (but only right in the center). I have to crawl in and out of it on my hands and knees.

I was going to put some more boxes in there but I realized there were photos and negatives in all of them and the attic is the one room in the house that gets really really warm in the summer. They’d be OK through the winter but if I forgot they were in there come summer… I don’t even want to think about it. So I still have four boxes of old journals, photos & negatives sitting in the loft with no place to go.

I dusted and swept and moved some things around to make a little more room in the loft. One thing we have way too much of is knick-knacks and old bottles and rocks. We probably have way too many books, too, but I can rarely bring myself to part with a book. I might give it up and toss all those rocks outside into my garden but give away my books?

books, books, books (the little green curtain is what covers my attic doorway).

This photo is a bit redundant but shows another book shelf full of books (and yes, that is a real antique lava lamp there – and it still works).

And a whole other wall of books.

Trying for another angle on the wall of books.

I even have books in the little corner (that’s a whole collection of Zane Grey in the red covers). On top of those crates is a box of little leather-bound classics that belonged to my paternal grandmother, Sylvia Cusick Wilcox. I think there’s 50 or 75 of the little books & they range from Edgar Allen Poe to William Shakespeare to Longfellow to…

This is just our book collection in the loft. There are more books in the living room, our bedroom, my studio and even the kitchen (if you count my cookbooks. I can’t cook a lick but I collect cookbooks).

While I was doing this I had a brilliant idea. I have resisted trying to catalog the books because I would have to kneel in from of those cabinets and write down the authors, titles & classification (Fiction, non-Fiction and then sub-classification: botany, biology, gardening, self-help, wood working, weather, sci-fi, fantasy, young adults, childrens’, biography…). My knees rebel at the thought! But I could take a photo of each shelf and write down the author & title from the photo using my computer… Hmmmm.

Then there’s this corner:

That’s my yard sale corner and Stuff That Doesn’t Have A Place corner. The photo albums & old journals… a filing cabinet… costumes… Grand baby toys… trunk of extra blankets.

Note to self: next time we buy a house, make sure it has more closets. Or get rid of a bunch of stuff.

I could still toss all those rocks out into the garden.

And there’s the Man Corner:

That’s mostly maps, “N”-scale train parts (he plans on building a whole track & village some day) and a couple boxes of old magazines that I swear could just disappear and he would never, ever know. I could toss those pine cones out, too.

I should toss those pine cones out. But I think he would notice they were gone…

So that is my story. I’m a hoarder of books, bottles, weird knick-knacks and rocks. the rocks could go out in the garden.