Building a library

I’ve taken referring to my books as the “post-peak library”.  I usually say it in a somewhat joking way, but I do honestly view books as a bit of hedge against a future that I still – and probably always will – have some concerns about.  It’s possible to keep a lot of knowledge on hand, and I think physical books may well be important as we need to reduce our energy use even further.

I buy a lot of books, as you may have noticed, and almost all of them are secondhand.  Even given their secondhand status, this is not the cheapest of options when it comes to reading.  Ideally, we’d all have wonderful libraries close by with the capacity to withstand the ever-increasing budget cuts that seem to be plaguing all manner of social services.  I can’t possibly state how important I think that libraries are here, but suffice it to say that given their multifaceted social roles – they are, of course, much more than just lenders of books – that I fervently hope that libraries will be around for a good long time.  However, I’m not sure that this will necessarily be the case.  I would be ecstatic to be proven wrong on this front, but in case I’m wrong, I’m taking some precautions to ensure that my bookish habits can continue.

But what exactly do you look for in a book?  How do you start to build up a reasonable library for the future?  I have limited space and a lot of books, and so I face this question pretty regularly, both when buying books and when trying to purge extra bits and pieces from the apartment.  Although I do buy a lot of books, the process is pretty intentional, and there’s always a lot that I leave behind that doesn’t really fit my needs.

From a more practical perspective, I considered what kind of books I’d like to have around as information resources.  For me, this means a wide variety of different cookbooks (in order to have a lot of different options for dealing with whatever’s available / inexpensive / plentiful at a given point in time.  It means books on many different aspects of gardening, with a focus on vegetables, organic techniques, and building up the soil.  It means books on knitting, sewing, and crochet, just in case I need to find ways to keep us a little warmer.  It means an assortment of general homesteading books, survival and first aid books, instructions for building homes and how to do home repairs, and livestock guides.  And it also means some books that look at social issues, to better understand what’s going on in the world.

I also value books for entertainment.  In a low-energy future, I suspect that books will be a valuable resource.  They can easily be shared and enjoyed by many different people, and all they require is a bit of light to read by.  Better yet, find yourself a good out-loud reader, and they can entertain quite a few people all at the same time.

As I started consciously building my library, I first considered what kind of authors and books that I knew that I’d want around – the books that I love to read, that I turn to repeatedly, and the ones that I knew would be read over and over again.  I bought up John Irving, Barbara Kingsolver, Annie Dillard, Neil Gaiman, Annie Proulx, Kate DiCamillo, Douglas Adams, Agatha Christie, C.S. Lewis, and Neal Stephenson, to name a few.  I also bought up books that I was interested in reading based on good things that I’d heard.

Next, I considered the classics.  I have an English degree, but my focus was largely on post-colonial literature, so there are a lot of classics that I simply haven’t read.  While I don’t necessarily love them all, of course, I usually assume that they’ve stood the test of time for a reason, and so I started building up my reserve of classics as well.  I picked up Thomas Hardy, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, Jonathan Swift, Rudyard Kipling, and the Brontes.

After the favourites and the classics, I began to consider other books.  My reading tastes change all the time.  Who’s to say that they won’t change again at some point in the future, or that there might be a day where I just want to read something different.  I also wondered if there might not be a day when I wanted something lighter and fluffier than my normal fare.  So some lighter books were added to the shelves – some fun mysteries, a bit of fantasy, and a number of Terry Pratchett books.

Of course, the issue with books is that they’re heavy and awkward to move.  In my experience, nothing kills willingness to help a friend move like discovering the size of their personal library.  But I think there’s great value in books, even though they seem to be largely undervalued and easily discarded in our society.  Admittedly, there’s probably a lot of stuff that’s of somewhat questionable quality and worth out there, but the act of reading – for information or for pleasure – is generally, to my mind anyway, one that is incredibly valuable, worthwhile, and definitely worth making space and time for.

 

Weekend goals

Thanks to an upcoming week’s worth of student presentations (and no lecture prep for me), it’s looking like I have a bit more time this weekend than I usually do.  Although I hope to get in some good novel-reading time on the couch - The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay has been waiting for me for a few weeks now – I also have a list of things that I’d like to get done.

• Make granola
• Make bagels
• Make bread
• Clean the kitchen
• Clean the living room
• Vacuum
• Sharpen the knives
• Start some seeds
• Cook one new meal

I don’t expect to do it all, but I’m putting it out here for a bit of motivation, inspiration, and accountability all the same.

Pretty and practical

In my built-in RSS blog feed thingy, I have a lot of design blogs.  I love design blogs, some to do with clothing, many to do with homes, and many just dealing with general style.  This strikes me as odd sometimes.  I long ago realised that if I wanted to live this life – the one with all the cooking and the canning, the biking and the knitting, the writing and the composting, and the exclusively used stuff – something was going to have to give, and that something was likely going to be style.  The plastic tub worm composter, piles of academic papers, bike trailer, grow lights, trash-picked furniture, and mismatched everything don’t always lend themselves to style, especially in a rather small apartment.

That said, I don’t think it’s impossible for pretty and practical to coexist.  Once upon a time, I had an apartment filled with lovely vintage things. Delicate vintage dishes.  Old quilts.  Fancy wool coats.  Plaid wool blankets.  Enameled cast iron in a range of bright colours.  Patterned vintage thermoses.  Knick knacks from the 20s and 30s that amused me, or that I happened to like.  Three dressmaker’s dummies, on which I displayed some of my very cool vintage finds.  It wasn’t really all that practical, though, and wound up taking a lot of space that it turns out I would rather have for cooking, canning, growing things, doing yoga, and generally living life.

And so, I started to declutter, and to focus more on the practical.  As I did so, I realised that just because something is practical, doesn’t mean that it can’t also be rather attractive.  I still have things that are purely for decoration – my mom’s old cowboy lunch box, my pottery “dissertation owl,” the birdhouse made by a friend, and an old globe, for instance – but by and large, I got rid of most of the things that weren’t serving a useful purpose.

Technically, I still have an apartment filled with lovely vintage things.  But now I keep or buy them because they’re well-made, practical, and things that I need.  If they’re lovely too, well that’s a real bonus.  The vintage cast iron got to stay because there is nothing I would rather cook dinner in.  So did the warm wool blankets, some of the useful and less-fussy dishes, and the thermoses that I carry my tea in.  But as I’ve decluttered, a lot of things that weren’t really all that useful made their way out the door, and things that were started coming in.  Graceful brass candle holders.  A sturdy and well-designed meat grinder.  Gorgeous heavy handmade pottery.  As many canning jars as I could find.

Even if I’m going to have a full apartment, and one that contains some things that just aren’t all that lovely to look at, I’d like it to look as nice as possible. There are things here that aren’t that lovely, and that I just can’t get away from right now.  One day, maybe I’ll have more room to stash the less-lovely things away – a big closet, or a basement, perhaps.  But for now, I try to focus on the things that I have that are both practical and pretty, and that bring me pleasure whenever I use them.

 

Purging

Of late, I’ve realised that if I want to reorganize my life and make some of the changes that I want to make (and fit in some of the “stuff” that these changes might entail), I need to get rid of more clutter. Things get messy far too easily, and it takes me far to long to get things back the way they should be.  In turn, this makes it more difficult to do the things that I want to do, especially when each activity requires straightening or tidying or shuffling to clear some space.  Heck, right now I barely have room for the pressure canner that I want.  At some point (this point), something’s going to have to give.

Every so often I do a purge, but I haven’t done one in a good while now, since work and finishing the dissertation has taken precedence for the last year or so.  But now, with the approach of spring, the desire to spring clean, and some extra time for a project here and there, I’m starting to clear things out a bit at a time and to tidy as I go.

By nature, I tend to jump in, pull everything out, start with the best of intentions, make good headway, and then burn out, leaving the project unfinished.  I’m resisting this tendency now, and trying to work on a small area or task at a time to do it well.  I’m also trying to remind myself that this really needs to be a process, and that it won’t all get done on the first go around.  I’ll need to do this again – possibly even a few times – to whittle down what we want and need to more manageable levels while still accounting for the things that are most important.

Today, I cleared out a few drawers and cupboards in the kitchen.  I have a bag, a box, and a few other bits and pieces for donation.  It’s not a lot, but it’s a start.  One challenge of this process is that I often find I have a hard time letting things go, especially when I understand their usefulness.  J. keeps pushing for me to get rid of some of my jars, for instance, but this kind of thing is something that I don’t think is worth giving up, even if I have to get rid of some other things to make room.  Candles, cast iron cookware, knitting supplies, sturdy shoes, and warm clothing all fall into this realm too – sure, I have lot, but I have a lot for a particular reason, and one that I think is both practical and very worthwhile.

Since I find it motivating to record these things, I think I’m going to keep track of them in my Independence Days postings, so clearing things out feels like good home management as well as a process that helps to facilitate other important activities.  I don’t anticipate weekly miracles – there are a lot of other things to be done at the same time – but I’m looking forward to a cleaner, easier to maintain home even as I step up some of the things that I’m doing in it.

Which future?

After another bout of reconsidering the volume of stuff that I have stashed in here, J. sent me a Grist article about stuff.  The intent was motivation – more examples of people who got rid of stuff and felt better after doing so.  But midway through the comments was a small comment thread started by someone who stated that their issue was that they didn’t know what future to prepare for.  Even though he or she would prefer less stuff, they felt as though they should keep things in case of future scarcity.

That pretty much sums it up for me, too (and might have helped to undermine the purpose of the article).  We live in a reasonable apartment for two people – just over 700 square feet or so.  It is full, though, and it’s almost exclusively full of my stuff.  Ideally, I’d like to have less.  I don’t relish the mess that comes when it’s difficult to put things away.  I dislike the difficulty in cleaning before company comes over.  I really loathe the thought of eventually packing and moving it all.  But when I think about getting rid of things, my mind instantly drifts to, “what if I need this,” “what if I can’t get this anymore,” “what if someone else needs this,” and the ever-popular “but this can be used for fill-in-the-blank, and will be handy to have.”

Thankfully, there’s still stuff around here that I can get rid of to make some extra room.  Filing cabinets that haven’t been cleaned out in 5 years.  Boxes of goodness-knows-what in the closet.  Hidden things under the bed and couch.  And maybe even some books that aren’t likely to be reread.  But most of this stuff I have because I see a use for it and, like the Grist commenter, it’s hard to know what future to prepare for.  I’ve pretty much made the assumption that it will be a more resource scarce future, but not knowing what that will look like and imagining the worst makes it very easy to cling tightly to anything that might lessen the burden, even a little bit.

Being that I’m unwilling to get rid of much, if any, of my uncertain future stuff, I guess I’m just going to have to get to work on things that are likely to be a bit less of a requirement and more of an interest or novelty.  The bike and trailer, canning jars, reference books, cast iron, knitting supplies, and guitar can stay, but some of the decorative things, unread novels, extra dishes, and textbooks might have to start making their way out the door.

I’d like to be able to move quickly, if we ever have to.  I’d like to not be so weighed down by my stuff.  I’d like to have a clean enough apartment that we’re not routinely scrambling before company comes, or even just facing down the mess on a regular basis. Being able to easily find and take care of things and knowing what we have on hand would be a boon.  Given the importance of at least some of this stuff, I don’t see it being that easy, but perhaps this will be a good focusing exercise in figuring out what I have that’s going to be the most practical, and what’s still missing that would be useful to have.

Enough

Recently, I’ve found myself complaining – here, in real life, even in yet-unpublished blog posts – about how I have too much stuff. This is, of course, true. It’s built up over the course of the dissertation, when I’ve had little time or energy to clean and clear out.  It’s built up as I’ve been concerned about sustainability and worked to add everything from books and yarn to canning supplied and extra good.  It’s been gathered because I have a lot of interests, and I tend to jump into them rather enthusiastically.  It’s collected, I’ll admit, because I just kind of like stuff.  Some of it needs to go. But, today, rather than seeing it as a burden, today I want to see it as more of a good thing than something to complain about.

It’s a good thing because I have enough, and my life is comfortable as a result.

I may have too much bedding, but I have a cozy place to sleep.

I may have too many clothes, but I’m warm and dry, and always have something to wear.

I may have two many pots and dishes, but I can cook lots of healthy, tasty food, and feed many people.

I may have too many books, but I have lots of interesting and useful things to read, and to loan or give to friends.

I may have too much stuff, but I have enough that I can live a more than comfortable life which is, sadly, not something that everyone in this world can say.

Things are still on their way out the door, of course.  I could certainly – and probably should – make do with less.  But I know that I have enough, and for that I am very grateful. At the same time, as I start to get rid of things I hope that what I give away will be useful to other people, and maybe even help to make sure that they too are able to have enough.

Storage solutions

As much as I appreciate the use of a car, I find myself stymied now with the new influx of things that tends to come when we have it. In addition to the food we picked up over the weekend, we added a few plastic tubs, a new garbage can, toilet paper,  a new desk chair, some used books, and three boxes of canning jars.

While we live in a reasonably-sized apartment of about 750 square feet, to call it full would be…charitable.  While it may have been full before (and even that would be stretching it), it’s even more so now.  The food is on the kitchen floor, the toilet paper is stacked in the bedroom, and the other bits are wherever they would kind of sort of fit. The canning jars are wedged into the cupboard at odd angles, although to be fair, that describes pretty much everything in every closet and cupboard that we have.

Pretty, it is not.

But neither is it practical.  It’s not exactly messy.  It’s really more crowded.  The kitchen is small, and with all the extra rice and flour, it’s difficult to get at the shelves and open the fridge.  The toilet paper makes it harder to walk around the bed.  The books…well, those are just everywhere right now, and not a week goes by that I don’t trip on one, or knock a pile over.  Sometimes it’s hard to find things, or to get at them when they’re a few layers deep in a closet or on a shelf.

My tendencies lean towards being a packrat.  But add into the mix the desire to be a bit more prepared for a somewhat uncertain future (and the excuse it provides for keeping stuff), and packrattery suddenly increases to the nth degree.  I keep the obviously practical stuff.  Food.  Canning jars.  Candles and lanterns.  Cast iron pots and pans.  Resource books.  The washboard.  Toilet paper.  Clothes.  Shoes.  Blankets.  My bike and its trailer.  But I keep the other, somewhat less obviously practical but also important stuff, too.  Pleasure reading and for distraction.  Card and board games, for the same reason.  Yarn and needles, for knitting.  Dishes and cutlery, for extra visitors at a meal.

The simple solution – in some ways, anyway – would be to get a bigger place.  But moving is an expensive pain, and we like the low cost of living and the proximity to groceries and various other amenities.  I could get rid of some more stuff – always an ongoing process around here – but this takes some time, and given the usefulness of a lot of this stuff, I have to admit some reluctance.

For now, the plan is better storage.  Clear out what is obviously not essential, and then make sure that there’s storage – conventional or unconventional – for it.  I’m envisioning rice and flour in tubs under the bed.  Canned goods under the couch.  Blankets stored under mattresses.  Stacks of plastic tubs or buckets in the corners. Canning jars under the sink.  It may not be pretty, but I think that I’m willing to work with practical for awhile.  If this stuff is important enough for me to get in the first place, it should also be important enough for me to store better once I get it home.

Really, anything just to keep my from stubbing my toe on The Shipping News again.

Practical, not pretty

I’ve always liked pretty.  Not flowers and lace and frills, so much (really not my thing), but I’ve always liked for things to look at least somewhat nice.

It turns out that with all of this storing, food experimentation, and preservation – and the fermenting especially – a lot of the pretty’s gone straight out the window in favour of the practical.  Now, when I walk into my kitchen I see a big jar of good-looking pickles topped off with an old ziplock tortilla bag.  Next to it is an old pyrex bowl with sauerkraut topped off with a mismatched plate on which is sitting a crock with “utensils” written on it in Danish that is in turn topped off with an old yogurt lid cut to size and a mason jar filled with water.  Prior to today it was filled with another old bag filled with beach glass that I’ve had for years.  It is, in no uncertain terms, not the prettiest thing I have going on around here.

I can’t say that the pile of dirty gardening shoes and rainboots by the front door is anything to write home about either.  Or the jars of ginger beer and sourdough starter, especially when they’ve been sitting for a few days.  Or the toppling pile of wool blankets, the box of mending and fabric scraps, the laundry hanging to dry wherever there happens to be room, and the bags of rice and beans stacked up in the kitchen.

Rather than spending money, I’ve been using what I have.  This is a good thing, of course.  The bank account is happier and I’m using things that otherwise would have been garbage or recycling.  In the last month I’ve reused bags, ice cream lids, soda bottles, and mason jars in ways that I never would have expected even a few months ago.  I take real pride in this.  It gives me pleasure to make do with what I already have, or to only need to pick up a small used thing here or there that I need, even if the results aren’t exactly pretty.

There’s something to be said for pretty, I think, or at least for things that are aesthetically pleasing.  I love to decorate, and to rearrange the apartment.  I keep things around that I think are beautiful – art on the walls, lovely blankets, nice dishes.  There are some places where I’ve let this ideal slip in the last year or so, though, and where practicality and frugality are simply winning out even when they’re not the loveliest of options.  I’m realizing more and more that my apartment is a place to live, not a showcase.  I’m more concerned now with how it functions and what it lets me do than how it looks.

Sometimes, in my idealized and romaticised world, I imagine having the perfect, well-made, very beautiful tool for every task (and a lovely, well-kept house to keep them in).  Maybe one day, when I know that they will definitely get used well and when I have room for them, I’ll buy some proper crocks for fermenting and arrange them on a wooden bench, stand up a well-built drying rack in the corner, and get some nicer jars for starting food in. Then again, maybe I won’t.  There’s value and even some pride in being practical, and in making do.  I’ll certainly consider getting things that I need, but often it turns out that the things that I need are right here, it’s just a matter of looking for them.

A donkey day

I love animals.  I want them in my life.  My future dreams include at least a small barnyard.  But until I have the life and enough land that are appropriate for animals, I satisfy myself with what i can get.  I love dog and cat sitting.  I delight in random encounters with rabbits, frogs, ducks, geese, mice and whatever else happens to cross my path in the wild.

This past weekend, though, I got to fill some of that big, largely animal-less hole with creatures of a much larger variety.  With my mother-in-law and her best friend in town, and with a trip into a nearby city in the works, we decided to make a side trip to the Donkey Sanctuary of Canada.

For those of you who haven’t been, and are relatively local, well…I highly recommend it.  It’s really a grand time.  I’ve gotten some strange looks when I’ve mentioned it, but invariably when people go they walk away completely smitten with the donkeys and the other animals there.

The sanctuary is intended to be, as they say, a happy ending.  Donkeys taken in are well-treated, as are the animals they foster out.  But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t some underlying sadness.  While some of the animals are there because their owners had changed circumstances and dealt with it proactively, others were abused and mistreated in a variety of ways.  Although the donkeys are now well off, I find that knowing that changes the experience, gives it a bit more depth.

Someday, I hope to have a few donkeys of my own.  For now, I’m happy to visit them on the farm and rub a few ears while I’m there.

Returning

A busy few weeks, I find, are usually followed by a bit of a lull.  Today is one of those days.  I hope very much that tomorrow can be too, at least for a part of the day, because I seem to be wiped.

I’ve been dissertating, as it were.  Slowly but surely.  Some research assistant work has taken time as well, as has general academic things like revising papers (which is always so much more of a slog than I think it will be) and sending emails. I spent a week towards the end of June making use of a week-long car loan from a good friend by running here and there and stocking up on things that I needed but are somewhat more difficult to get without a vehicle, but more on that soon, I imagine. A visit from my mother-in-law was preceded by a week and change of general tidying and cleaning, and then the visit itself was absolutely lovely (my mother-in-law and I get along fabulously) if quite tiring. Barring the dissertation and upcoming revisions on one paper, I’ve done most of what’s needed to be done recently, and now I hope there’s a bit of rest to be had.  The apartment is tidy, the new Internet set up and functional, the fridge full, the work more or less under control.

I’ve missed writing here, but more than that I’ve missed having the time and the inclination to think and plan as much as I usually do about how I’m living my life right now and what I want to do next.  It’s so easy to do, but I find that when I get busy some things fall to the wayside.  Sleep.  Healthy eating.  Exercise.  Enough downtime.  Writing, reading, and knitting.  Cooking and baking.  Getting outside and into the world.  Living more intentionally and sustainably.  Sometimes these things happen, of course, and I know that they’ll happen again just as they always do, but it’s always unsettling when then do and then it takes a while to swing back to being on track again.

Getting back on track is now the project du jour.  It won’t happen overnight but truthfully, I think that I’m probably nowhere near as far off as it feels right now through the haze of disrupted schedule, unhealthy eating, not enough sleep, and the resoundingly hollow feeling that takes over right after much-loved guests leave.  There’s always much to do, though, and I look forward to getting some bread and sprouts going, checking on the worms, cooking some dinner, and maybe even sneaking a bit of jam making somewhere along the line.  With any luck, I’ll even find a bit of time in there for reading, oh joy of joys.