4.13.2007

oddly satisfying or, how I spent my easter vacation

Oddly Satisfying Activity # 1: Wednesday I spent the bulk of the day working with one of my housemates organizing our Novitiate Library. A number of folks have donated great books on spirituality, prayer, religious life, personal growth, and a variety of other topics. The only thing is, we never spent the time to organize the books in any shape or form - they were simply stashed onto the shelves in our early days of trying to get settled. It was impossible to try to look at what was in there without getting a headache. But on Wednesday, my housemate and I were a whirlwind of activity - first taking all the books out into the hallway to organize them by category, then organizing by author, then putting them back into the library in their newly ordered fashion. We even made little labels for the various categories and put together a very nice chair from Ikea to make a little reading area. I realized that it had been a long time since I'd worked on a project like that from beginning to end. It was oddly satisfying.

Oddly Satisfying Activity #2: We are five women living in one house where we eat most if not all of our meals. Given that, it's not surprising that our refrigerator gets crammed full of disorganized - if tasty - items pretty easily. After my library experience, I decided to tackle the refrigerator this morning. I took everything out of the fridge, organized it by foodstuff, disposed of out dated items, cleaned out the fridge, and put everything back in. I was so energized by my measurable success - Novitiate doesn't have a lot of measurable successes - I then tackled the little and big freezers as well. Again, it was oddly satisfying.

And that, my bloggy friends, is how I spent my Easter vacation!

A random PS - I'm sitting here in my chair in front of an open window as I type. The Easter Bunny (or was it my Novice Director?) gave me a small replica of himself (the EB - not ND) in stuffed form, that I've had sitting on my window sill. Just now, as I was typing, said Easter Bunny took a dive off the window sill onto the floor. Either that or the wind knocked him over.

2 comments:

Mollie said...

Susan, you're a woman after my own heart. There's nothing as satisfying as imposing order on a disorderly library... or at least, that's what I told myself during my 4 years of sorting, shelving and shelf-reading in my college's library! It wasn't the cushiest job on campus, but it was one of the most noble, I thought. When it's time for my personal library to merge with my fiance's I plan on turning it into a major project. I may even create a card catalog.

Judy Vaughan-Sterling said...

Oh my!

Have I got a refrigerator for you, intrepid food warrior! I can't even identify some of the food in mine!

As far as your library goes, you can log onto http://www.librarything.com and organize your books on the computer (I think it's free). I haven't done this yet, but I plan to.

Enjoy!