Motherhood – The Hardest Job Ever.

I would give myself a rating of 8/10 for my motherhood performance this weekend.

I have delivered on the meals apparently. This is my Pumpkin Red Thai Curry cooked lovingly despite having been on the go since 4am. Delicious, and all those fresh vegetables ensured we had the strength to continue with the task of unpacking removalist cartons the following day.

My daughter, the one working through “1001 Books To Read Before You Die”, left me in charge of stacking her bookshelves. Her new abode is a contemporary two bedroom unit, although she refers to it as being “ one bedroom and a reading room”.

Anyway, I lost points for putting the Stozhenitsyns next to her collection of Musical DVDs. Think Ms must have been an old dance hall girl in a previous life. Did you not know that Julie Andrews and Doris Day cannot sit next to, or on the same shelf as, The Cancer Ward?

Also Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra movies are their own genre and are in a separate musical DVD section.

Mothers are very good, however, at buying toilet brushes, washing powder, and bath mats. I’ve graciously declined the opportunity to be in charge of rehoming the CDs.

I’ve also located a couple of really eclectic chairs most suitable for any Reading Room, but Ms is quite dismissive. What do you think?

Yes, I know. Down to 6 out of ten.

 

The Latest Trend In Book Shelf Placements. Yes or No?

Angela Mollard is an Australian journalist and social commentator. My youngest daughter alerted me to an article written by Mollard in the weekend paper.

The article opens with:

“LAST year when I planned to sell my house I had some stylists come in to make it look, well, stylish.
The first thing they did was pull all the books off my floor-to-ceiling shelves and stack them, with ruthless efficiency, in colour-coded piles.
Then they put them back on the shelves in little collections of colours with some of the books standing upright and others stacked horizontally.On top of the books they placed things from round the house — a globe, some colourful tiles from Mexico, a vintage camera, a photo of a sycamore pod and a bird’s nest I’d found under a tree in the front garden”.

My youngest daughter is working her way through the 1001 Books To Read Before You Die List. Many of the books on the List are quite old and hard to come by. One of her greatest joys is ruffling through antiquarian book shops where she will happily lose an hour in pursuit of a title. Most of these books she keeps where they find their “forever home” on her bookshelves. Some, upon reading, go elsewhere.

My youngest is in the process of relocating and is currently living in a state of fear. You see, her elder sister, the semi professional renovator and lover of all things minimalist, is determined to run with the interior decoration of the new abode. I am ashamed to admit that she is a huge fan of colour coordinated book spines.

Mollard warns us that “ a British interior designer called Lauren Coleman recently stacked her books backwards with the spines to the wall in order to keep the colour palette of her living room “neutral”.

What the heck?

I always thought you purchased a property on the basis of three things :

0. Position. Position. Position
0. Daggiest house in the best street
0. And It’s all about the “bones” of a house
0. Must be close to a variety of eateries and a decent dress shop.

So, I fibbed about that last one, but I do not lie when I share with you that no financial advisor ever told me to colour coordinate my book spines in order to pocket a little extra of the folding stuff in a sale.

Talk about a First World problem.

I am aware that my feet are firmly planted in another era, when indoor plants and macrame planters were on trend. What, they are back, did I hear you say?

That at least gives me hope that a bookshelf full of individuality and much loved reads will be back in favour in the not too distant future.

Today’s Pop Quiz:

Yes or No. Do you colour coordinate your book spines?