• Shellynoir leaves Sang and me six tall IKEA bookcases when she moves to Brooklyn. They take up a whole wall of the living room. But
• for several years they are mostly empty, because it is vexing to figure out how to attach them to the wall so they won’t kill us in an earthquake.
  • old-school lathe and plaster wall in which it is difficult to find studs
  • baseboard that keeps the shelves from standing quite flush with the wall. It doesn’t seem right to remove and saw up the baseboard for shelving if it’s not built-ins. But!
• for my birthday, Sang Does The Thing!
  • buys boards to affix to the wall, solving the baseboard gap problem, and even paints them to match the wall, with paint the previous owner left behind for us in the basement in 1996
  • gets toggle bolts to fasten the boards to the wall, even though making 5/8″ holes in the plaster is unnerving
  • fastens the bookcases to the boards with L brackets.
• We go to IKEA for a few extra shelves. And breakfast.

Two dollars! excluding coffee and elderflower drink.

Things that now have a designated place on the living room shelves:

• current household files
• shoe box of correspondence to be saved
• my university library books
• my TBR that are not library books
• my borrowed-from-individuals books
• footstool that Bookherd made
• art supplies TBD – colored pencils and sketchpads?
• picture books
• OED, Oregon road atlas, Sunset Garden Book, Chinuk Wawa dictionary, and a few other reference books
• the globe
• comics
• poetry
• coffee table books
• empty shelf for the kitty
• Legos, Zoob, K’Nex
• games
• art and photos from friends
• pop-up books
• Sang’s research project books, mostly from university library
• Sang’s Holmesiana
• yoga mat, foam roller, rollout-stick

Now, in addition, the mostly-fiction in the other room won’t be so overstuffed, and shelving will be easier there too. I am very, very pleased.