Untidiness and Reading

My house is NEVER tidy. I don't know how other people manage to keep their houses tidy and have jobs, children, do courses, live life. If I were to keep my house tidy, and my washing and ironing all done, I would be working ALL the time. The thing is though, it feels like I DO work all the time, so where am I going wrong?? The best I ever manage is "not-filthy" (and I'm pretty sure there are areas in my house which don't even reach that status). It really gets me down. Not counting things like a printmaking studio or a house, the best gift anyone could get me would be to clean and organise my house. Just once, not all the time - I'm not that greedy!

Anyway onto my next, not totally unrelated topic. I read. a lot. I used to read more than I do now, because I tend to be so exhausted that my reading pattern often goes "read one line, fall asleep, drop book," repeat next night (with same line). But the past month or so I have read quite a bit of fiction - particularly some books that everyone else on the planet had read and I hadn't. (The best of these was The Kite Runner. If you can start the Kite Runner and not be totally gripped, and moved, you are seriously weird.)

I try to give a book to charity when I buy a new one (for space reasons) but when it comes to non fiction I can't, because they are research. I had a small overflow bookcase in my dining area, just for the books I had borrowed from my studio or brought downstairs to dip into. This is the state it got into.


So one day recently, responsible parent that I am, I persuaded Joe to jam a far too big bookcase halfway into his car, tie it not-very-securely with a fraying bungee rope and drive dangerously through the town.
And it was worth it.

And by the way, anyone thinking if I didn't read so much I would have more time to keep things tidy - I only read in bed or on the train. So there.