Gee, why aren't you fully unpacked after nearly two years?

Scott Andrew Hutchins

Jun 1

I lost two tall bookcases and two short bookcases when I moved into storage. Most of my income goes to pay bills, do laundry, buy toilet paper and cleaning supplies. The little money left does often go for more books and DVDs (+ three rarities on VHS-- Battle of the Commandos (Umberto Lenzi, 1969), The Sea Shall Not Have Them (Lewis Gilbert, 1953) (which came in a lot with the previous), Starship (Roger Christian, 1983)). Tall bookcases are expensive, and although sometimes you can find people giving them away, I have no practical way to transport them because few of my friends have cars because this is New York City.

The short bookcase under the Peter Schickele poster holds books by authors Dr-Fr. The next holds DVD/VHS From Cr-Ev. The next holds books from Fr-He. The next holds DVD/VHS from Si-Tw. The next holds books from Thackeray to the end of the alphabet. I have another short shelf with VHS/DVD U-Z because I started at both ends of the alphabet and worked inward. The same is true for my CDs, where artists A-G and Karr-Z are shelved, but H-Karajan and Q through Schwartz are in boxes mostly no more than three high across the floor of the apartment. I don't like it, and I worry about getting evicted, but spending more money without a way to replenish it makes little sense to me.

It's very galling to be told I live in a pigsty or be told I can't organize when I clearly can organize and simply lack the appropriate tools to do it well, tools that could be acquired with money. I've had grandstanders publicly offer to help and then not follow through, which makes it worse than if no one had said anything, reminiscent of that time when someone offered to buy me the Philip Glass Symphony No. 5 CD, which came in elaborate packaging and cost over $30 (and is no longer in print), but never did.

And here I have all these parts of bookcases that I can't really use right now and frequently fall over and cause me problems and pain but am not going to simply trash:

So this is a really lousy situation, and as long as I'm making only about $400-450 a month, I really don't see a reasonable way to change it. Of course, it doesn't help that IKEA stopped making its tall, space-efficient Gnedby towers in North America even though they can readily be purchased from their European and Asian sites.

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