A Midweek Bookshelf Clean and Some Quick Fixes
The living room shelves have been bothering me for weeks. Books stacked on top of books, old magazines shoved in sideways, and a layer of dust that showed up no matter how often I wiped things down. I finally cleared an afternoon on Tuesday to deal with it. The bottom shelf especially felt gritty under my fingers when I ran a hand along it that morning, and the faint smell of old paper and dry wood had started to fill the room every time I walked past.
I started by pulling everything off the bottom two rows. Most of the books I kept, but a stack of paperbacks from college went into a donation bag. Ren helped carry the heavier ones out to the car later. We found an old photo album from when we first moved in, which took up more time than planned because we kept stopping to look at the pictures. One showed the two of us standing in front of the empty living room with paint cans still stacked in the corner, both of us covered in specks of white primer. Another had Ren balancing a takeout pizza box on one arm while the shelves sat half-assembled on the floor. The pages felt stiff and slightly curled at the edges from being stored in the back.
The brackets on the top shelf needed tightening too. One of them had started to sag, so I ran out to the hardware store for new screws and a small level. The drive took longer than usual because the north river bridge had lane closures again. They have been working on that section for months now. Inside the store the air smelled like metal and fresh-cut lumber, and I ended up lingering a few extra minutes near the paint samples, flipping through the little cards even though I did not need any.
Ren’s sister called while I was out. She lives in Halverston and mentioned the latest dust storm had knocked out power for a few hours the day before. She said it happens more often these days and they just plan around it. We talked for a bit about nothing in particular before she had to go pick up a package. She mentioned her neighbor’s dog had barked through most of the outage and how she had ended up reading by flashlight in the kitchen until the lights flickered back on.
Back home I wiped down the empty shelves and put the books back in a better order. I grouped the cookbooks together and moved the design reference books to the middle where they are easier to reach. The top shelf got a couple of small plants that had been sitting on the windowsill. Their leaves still carried a faint trace of the lemon-scented cleaner I had used on the glass earlier. A few specks of dust drifted down when I shifted the pots into place, catching the afternoon light.
For lunch I made a quick snack with some of the root vegetable spread we bought last weekend. It goes well on crackers when you do not feel like making a full meal. I ate it standing at the counter while sorting the last few magazines. The spread had a slightly sweet, earthy taste that lingered after each bite, and I ended up adding an extra cracker to the plate when I realized how quickly the first ones disappeared. A small pile of torn subscription cards from the magazines collected beside the sink.
Later in the evening we watched part of a documentary about the early moon base project. Ren had it queued up from the weekend. We only made it through the first half before deciding to finish the rest another night. The footage showed rows of silver modules being lowered into place against the gray surface, and the narrator kept mentioning how the first crew had to deal with constant equipment glitches. Ren paused it once to point out a detail about the solar panels that looked different from the ones we had seen in photos before.
Wednesday I dropped the donation bag at the library on my way to a client meeting. The rest of the day stayed pretty normal. Just errands and a couple of calls about fabric samples for the new project downtown. By the time I got home the shelves already looked better, which made the whole effort feel worth it.
