Upheaval, continuing

Not all that long ago I showed some photos of my flat amid the chaos of renovation. Much has progressed in the two and a half weeks since the room was stripped. Now it's been insulated, rewired, replastered, and a skylight added -

This stage was preceded, of course, by this sort of thing -

Elsewhere in the flat, the chaos remains, with all the contents of that room, and others, needing "rationalisation" - basically, paring down to 10% (at a guess) of what has been and is hidden in cupboards and odd corners. The aim is to put back into the room ONLY what should BE in the room. So, I've lost my convenient hiding places for the books I might never get around to reading and the swathes of fabric I might never get around to sewing. 

Good, they need to go on to other places, new lives. But the hardening of heart needed to let them go is a wretched process. 

At the moment I'm concentrating on the books. This lot, some 3 dozen volumes, went to the Oxfam Bookshop early in the week -

As it was a sunny day, I put another dozen books "on the wall" and they disappeared in no time.

Which left the rest of the books that had been gathering dust under the desk, on Tom's carefully custom-fitted shelves - a practice piece, it turned out, for the bespoke shelving and cupboard-building that makes up a large part of his "carpentry" livelihood. 

On the left, the keepers; on the right, 44 books looking for new homes

The pile isn't down to 10% and there may have to be some new bookshelves somewhere, but 50% is pretty good.  I'd actually enjoy this if there was an obvious difference, such as a rewarding expanse of empty shelves.

And the sorting is the easy part - without a car to carry many bags at a time, getting the books (etc) to the charity shop takes time. So much easier to put them on the wall on a sunny day, and enjoy seeing them disappear.

This is from one of the older books (1929) that went out -