Messy Bookshelves

When my husband asked me what I wanted for Valentine’s Day this year, I told him, “I want a new bookshelf.”

Shaking his head he said, “That will just give you more room for new books.”

“Actually, it will give me a place to put the books that are stacked under my bed and in the closet.”

Unfortunately, on the day we drove to Costco to buy them, the tall stack of bookshelves-in-boxes had completely disappeared. So instead, he gave me – romantically enough – the $$$ I would have spent on new bookshelves as a present instead. That means, I’m shopping for new shelves, and I haven’t yet found a set that were as nice, or fit the room as well, as the set I had originally planned to buy. It also means my present bookshelves are getting messier and messier.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog about my New Year’s resolution to ‘organize’ my life; one drawer, closet, and filing cabinet at a time. While I have made some progress, the process has been slower than I imagined it would be, so clutter and disorganization are still running rampant behind closed doors and drawers in our house.

This morning I woke early, and began running lists through my head like buzzing bees. The sound of the bees was soothing, so I fell back to sleep for a while, then woke with a headache from the tension of thinking about the mountains of things on my list. Fortunately, I had no early appointments, so I lay in bed for a while to see if the buzzing bees would come back. What came to me instead was an idea that was almost as comforting as the buzzing bees: Japanese concept of ‘wabi-sabi’. Wabi-sabi means embracing and appreciating the beauty and imperfection of life, instead of trying to neatly contain it. As a reforming crazed perfectionist, I am still struggling to accept that messiness and imperfection can be beautiful. But just then, I happened to glance at the bookshelves in my bedroom.

In the early morning light, I saw the informal arrangement of books and photographs on my crowded shelves through fresh eyes. My books aren’t arranged by color. They aren’t in alphabetical order. I tend to group multiple books by the same author together, and I have informal sections of books on the same topic: yoga, feng-shui, decorating, or memoir. And occasionally, I have tossed a book or seven horizontally across the tops of the vertically-stacked volumes – because I’m running out of space.

This morning, for the first time, I finally understood what wabi-sabi really means. My bookshelf, though informally arranged, possessed a quiet and unexpected beauty. It was, in fact, a collection of the books I love most in the world, stacked next to each other, interspersed with other favorite treasures: family photographs in silver frames, hand-written notes from a daughter, and a heart-shaped box holding silver earrings that were a Christmas gift from my sister. Though my arrangement was informal, messy and crowded, it possessed a strange and beautiful spirit that no neatly-organized shelf could possibly compete with. So, although I will continue with my great ‘organization’ project, I have decided that I’ll continue it with less rigor. Instead, I’ll remember that I don’t need to rush or force the process. My home will never look like Martha’s – simply because I’m not Martha, or anyone else. I am myself. I like an occasional dust bunny and I leave my silver candlesticks unpolished because they look better that way to me.

After my wabi-sabi moment, I took an informal tour of the rest of the house and noticed an unexpectedly lovely arrangement of rainbow stacked plates in the dining room. I stopped to admire a pile of my son’s well-lived-in shoes in the mud room. And I saw the beauty of our life together as a messy, imperfect family living in an elegantly disarranged house that will never (thank goodness) be perfect. And though I am still continuing my search for new bookshelves, for now, I’m okay with having books stacked in odd places – on tables, inside drawers, and under the bed. For now, they are a part of who and what we are as a family and it helps me remember that while life may be messy, it is also strangely beautiful – and often it is the very flaws and imperfections that make us wabi-sabi – stunning in our imperfect humanity – messy bookshelves and all.

Mom-Mom