piles and piles

 

I don't file, I pile. It's my preferred method of organising stuff: books, plates, fabrics, textiles, papers, notebooks. I even pile my files. Not that I have many files - who would when a pile is much easier to manage - but recently I bought a multi-pack of wallet files in nice colours which are still empty but in a colourful pile on a book shelf.

There is a photoshoot here tomorrow (and the following three Mondays, and a couple of Mondays ago) which means I need to tidy up and get the house ready. It also means that on Sunday afternoons I begin to realise just how many piles I have around the place that must be moved. Piles of books being read, books already read, books to be read, magazines, newspapers, torn out pages of magazines and newspapers, fabrics, tablecloths, and stacks of cut out fabrics.

Simon looks at them, sees a mess, and claims I was a mole in a previous life. I look at them and see a system, organisation, careful categorisation, and an evolving way of grouping of ideas and resources. And now I see how very attractive piles can be, too. How they make interesting patterns, suggest colour combinations, happy reading coincidences, and create serendipitious collisions of ideas. At last, I have an aesthetic justification for them, and I shall be moving them all back to their rightful places as soon as each photoshoot is over.