Cleaning, getting organized and taking stock

We're having another unusually long weekend: today was declared a holiday to allow people to go and vote during the barangay elections. Having no lecture notes or slides to prepare or review, I thought I'd take the opportunity to finally clear some things from my shelves here in my room and organize whatever is left.

I have a large open bookshelf here in my room that's filled with books, mainly books that I use for my work and books that I read for pleasure like novels, reference books and books on the Catholic faith. Although these were more or less organized, there were many books that I no longer referred to or read and thought should go into archive, i.e., stored in cabinets in the basement. Likewise, there were some books downstairs that I felt like reading again or else thought I would be referring to in the near future for my work. So with several trips up and down the spiral staircase (which I began doing yesterday evening), down went the old and useless books and up came the books I wanted to read. Several other books that I kept in another but smaller shelf in my room got moved up to the big one as well. I also managed to dust the shelves and clean out the accumulated dust with my trusty chamois cloth before putting the books back on the shelf.

There were also a few other articles that I happened to dump on the shelf because it was convenient to do so then. Deciding that I had finally to get rid of those--they were just collecting dust anyway--I dug up an old box and place all the bric-a-brac into the box and stashed the box away in one of the cabinets downstairs.

Now that I've moved and organized my books, I've just realized how many books I actually own. (Here, that is. I actually have more books that I left with my sister abroad plus I haven't considered the other books around that house that I could include in my collection.) By my estimate, if I stood all my books together in a single row, they would form a line more than twenty feet long. Considering that I also have my huge collection of CDs and a sizeable library of music books and sheet music, I don't think I can live in one of those tiny Tumbleweed houses anymore. Else, if I manage to do so, I'd need a separate shed for my books and CDs alone. So much for my hopes of living small!