Organizational Bliss (6C)
I look to my bookshelf just across from my bed and I see my alphabetical system in effect. My DVD collection, ranging from Bridesmaids to Zombieland, stand on the left side of the shelf in order based on title. My books, by last name of author, stand on the right, from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (my, what a lovely alphabetically ordered name) to The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. In between my movies and books in a short pile sit my readings for the year (because they’re books for pain and not pleasure), from Theodore Dreiser down to Tennessee Williams.
Croon on, Lana. Also marvel at my library’s organization.
A cover of Lana Del Rey’s ‘Video Games’ by The Young Professionals comes to an end on my iTunes. When I maximize the window and feel like listening to the original, I scroll up to L to find Ms. Del Rey’s entire discography, in order of release, with every subheading in iTunes filled out: title, artist, album, year, genre, even track number. In the cover flow on the top of the window, a smoky Lana stares down at me from the 300×300 pixel album artwork I pulled from Google.
I love alphabetization.
Knowing that my books, movies and music are all in alphabetical order is comforting to me. Alphabetical order has been ingrained in my system since elementary school, where teachers would never let us kids back into the school after recess until we filed ourselves into a line, alphabetical by last name. With a last name starting with S I never had much to worry about, but it was almost like an exciting game to me when I watched my classmates try to figure out who they stand in front of and behind. Even though the class list never changed it was still a struggle in May.
Alphabetization allows for easy access. If I feel like rereading the Harry Potter series, I know it’s on the fourth shelf down in my bedroom at home. My DVD collection, as seen in my little header for this blog here, is aesthetically pleasing as much as it is systematic. I’ve gone back and forth between ordering them based on title or based on director. But by back and forth I mean I take about three hours to reorganize all of my movies by-director only to change it back to by-title because by-director looks so jumbled.
Organization is everything.
This is so lovely.
My bliss is in keeping things in a system. The clothes in my closet can’t really be alphabetized, but they can be organized! Starting on the left side of my closet: heavy knit sweaters, thin sweaters, sweater vests, cardigans, long sleeve shirts, short sleeve shirts, t-shirts, t-shirts with logos on them, dress shirts, classy shit (my button up vest, my ties), sweatpants, jeans. And within each of these categories, the clothes are organized by colour. There’s no standard order for colour, you say. Although the majority of the stuff I wear is black, I go by the rainbow.
My iTunes, as I previously stated, looks like perfection. But all perfection has a price: before I decided to organize everything perfectly, artists and album titles and all that were sporadically blank, so it literally took me about three or four days of nonstop work to fill in the missing information, album covers, and most importantly (and most tedious!), track numbers. The price was worth it: people marvel at my files. My computer is filed in a similar systematic way.
Matt, you’re weird.
Oh, I know.
I look back at this post and see how much it reeks of weirdness. I’m not actually excited by alphabetization, although I do find it fun to do. While I find it the most logical of systems, it really doesn’t add much to the speed in which I might select something from my shelf. Organization in my closet is a little bit more practical, but even if it fails to address a real need it’s nice to look at, at the very least. Regardless, much like with all of my weird tendencies, it’s all for comfort: a comfort in my familiar logic. I’m comfortable with a system I’ve established for myself – just like with my weird guidelines for my notebooks, or with how I go about Canada’s Wonderland – and so I find happiness in what I’ve accepted as functional.
I feel a little bit like Monica on Friends. This post just makes me think of the episode where Monica, Rachel, Chandler and Joey have a trivia contest about one another in order to win Monica’s apartment, and one of the lightning round questions involves Monica’s organization of towels which sounds a lot like how I go about organizing my closet. (0:38)
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