It’s time to go, books on the shelf 211/365

Again and again I learn that the best way to have time in my day for silence, solitude and simplicity is to complete a household task first. Soooo boring, so true. This morning I divvied up a shelf of books: a bag for my daughter’s yard sale, a bag to give to some minister friends, and the final third back on the shelf, either to read or just keep for a while.

It’s time to go, volumes of old books: 210/365

     Many of us have sets of books from long ago. Ours were handed down by my in-laws. All with works of James Fenimore Cooper, (as well as William Shakespeare and George Elliot). As I boxed the volumes (there must have been 40volumes but I didn’t count) I thought of these prolific authors, writing long-hand--no computer, no multiple drafts. It was a different way back then with pen in hand, Cooper in the nineteenth century, Shakespeare in the sixteenth and early seventeenth.

     We will store these books in the barn until our son takes them away to hand down to his children. Meanwhile, the shelves are empty, ready to be filled with a few books we are not ready to get rid of yet.  

Arcane tax returns, it’s time to go. 209/365

 

     From the attic I brought down file-upon-file upon-file box of income tax statements for my husband to sort out and hopefully let go of. He earned a Grade A. We don’t need tax returns from 1997. Or do we? He asks.  You never know. But, gratefully he sorted,  bagged, and put them in the garage, ready for the shredder or the dump.

 Once they are in the garage, I figure they are beyond my responsibility. The plastic file boxes, left over from my teaching days, are also out of my jurisdiction. 

     One big file box remains and up to the attic it will go.

 

   

t’s time to go, a few more books: 208/365

I

    So far I’m doing a noble job just going through my stuff and leaving my husband’s for him to purge when he so chooses. Today, however, when I tried to get rid of an old book, I learned that he’s not ready yet.

    “What’s this?” he asked.

    “Some old book. Do you want to get rid of it?”

    “Oh, no. It’s fascinating. I’m going to read it.”

    All I can say is that when I finish with my stuff, he’d better watch out. Lucky for him, that won’t be for a loooong while.

    

 

    Today was meager pickings. I chose the bookshelf in the hall, only to discover that except for “Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle”, which I couldn’t possibly let go of, and the set of “Queen Lucia” books by E.F.Benson, which my mother-in-law trusted me to pass down the generations, all the books were my husband’s golf books.