Continuing our Life in View series exploring what deserves ongoing attention, this week’s Grace & Humor takes a self-deprecating look at what happens when keeping things In-View becomes its own problem. Scott’s nightstand stack has become architectural, his Amazon driver knows him by name, and his wife wonders whether these books are reading material or furniture.
I keep what matters in view, right in front of me. If my life’s filing system were a fridge, everything would be on the front of the middle shelf. That’s the idea, anyway. Important things where I’ll see them. This explains the tower of books on my nightstand that has been growing since approximately 2019.
📚 The Tower
The book on top arrived in November. I placed it there with genuine intention. “This weekend,” I told myself. That was eleven weekends ago.
The book beneath it came in August. The one under that has a bookmark on page 63, which I inserted sometime during the previous administration. I don’t remember what happens on page 62. I’m not entirely sure I remember what happens on page 1.
The stack has become architectural. I’ve started worrying about structural integrity. Occasionally, a book slides off at 2 a.m., and Watson investigates the noise like it might be an intruder. It’s never an intruder. It’s just my intentions, collapsing.
📦 The Colonization
The nightstand is only the beginning. There are books on the kitchen counter. Books on the dining room table. A stack beside my reading chair that I optimistically call “the queue,” as if I’m running a deli and these books have taken numbers. Another pile in my office that arrived in Amazon boxes I haven’t fully unpacked. I know what’s in them. More books. I remember ordering them. I remember thinking, “This one I’ll definitely read.”
I keep buying them. The Amazon driver knows my name now. He’s stopped ringing the doorbell. Just leaves the boxes and waves.
My wife has opinions about this.
“You know Kindle exists,” she mentioned last week, gesturing at a bundle that had colonized the coffee table.
I do know Kindle exists. I have hundreds of books on Kindle. I also have dozens of print books scattered across every horizontal surface in the house. The Kindle books are invisible. The print books are extremely visible. My wife can confirm. She confirms frequently.
“Are you going to read these, or are they decorations now?”
A fair question. I did not have a fair answer. I may have mumbled something about the tactile experience of physical pages. She was not impressed.
🕰️ The OBE Problem
Some books I do read. I finish them, feel accomplished, and then leave them in the stack anyway because putting them away would require deciding where they go. Other books become what my former colleagues used to call “OBE,” overtaken by events. The leadership book from 2021 that references a workplace culture that no longer exists. The technology guide for software that’s been discontinued. The pandemic-era reflection that felt urgent in 2020 and now feels like a time capsule I’m not ready to open.
Last month, I bought a book I already owned. It was in the office pile. I discovered this while unpacking the new one.
💡 The Accidental Furniture
Keeping something visible isn’t the same as paying attention to it. The stack was supposed to remind me what mattered. Instead, it became furniture. The books stopped being invitations and started being decorations, monuments to the person I thought I’d have time to be.
My wife was right to ask. Reading and filing would take less time than I’ve spent defending the system.
Maybe the stack needs to shrink before it can speak again. Maybe three books, chosen with intention, would do more than thirty books chosen with hope.
👉 Try This
Look at what you’ve kept “in view” that’s become invisible through accumulation. Pick one. Engage with it or release it. Let the rest wait somewhere you can’t see them.
😇 Part of the Grace & Humor comedy track from Spirituality Today.
😜 Want something a little sharper? Try our Sacred Satire series.
📬 Share this reflection with someone who needs to organize a smile today.
I, too, have accumulated many books over the years. I got rid of some of them before my parents and I moved last year, but I still have a long TBR book list. I plan to read these books someday. That's what all book hoarders say, right? LOL