IKEA 2008
Val is always changing the house. Each wall and every corner will become, eventually, a piece of art. Yes, it’s an odd house but I don’t have to dust it so it’s all good. One thing my wife needs is storage space. We’re searching around online, at the giant home improvement stores, and even the Salvation Army for shelving ideas. Val does 3-D art, assemblage art I think it’s called. She buys parts everywhere she goes. Or picks up things people drop in parking lots (and she’s got me doing it, and her friends even picked up dropped items on their summer trip to New Orleans for the ALA convention.) We have some favorite stores in Greenville where she buys small glass bottles, buttons, 1940-60s pieces of “ephemera” (she taught me that word, it’s a nice one, eh?), most of them are on Dickinson St. if you’re in the area. Remember When, Dapper Dan’s — and more.
Our house is filled with Valness. There’s a manikin in the corner of what used to be our dining room. His name is Spencer Montgomery and occasionally, he blogs on macewan.net. The upstairs hallway is in the midst of a conversion. We’re lining the walls with bookshelves, making that area a sort of subway car style library. The hardest part is not moving the books or constructing the shelves, it’s in getting the book in Val-order. She had categories not like any place I’ve ever been — books reviewed, history books, technology, philosophy, Ruth’s books, my books that are not technology books, religion… once it’s in place I’ll understand it. She tells me she will buy a labeler this weekend and start putting labels on the kitchen lockers and the bookshelves.
Yes, the kitchen has lockers. I liberated old high school lockers (painted red) for the kitchen. They line the breakfast room walls. Val’s turned me into quite a liberator. I particularly enjoy freeing piles from bricks from their unhappy empty lot existence.
The new IKEA catalog came in the mail today. I get to look at how the minimalist world lives. How people design cabinets to hold stuff, how stuff can be put away, where stuff can be safely accessed without standing on a chair… stuff that might not become art.
