Box heaven - or is it hell?

I am slowly but surely surrounding myself with boxes filled with stuff - books, textile implements, more books, resources and materials, more books, tools, cloth, and even more books*. It is a weird-looking mix of order and chaos: a jumble of things on heaps to be sorted out, books still in shelves (almost none left in the study, though), things that are pre-packed in boxes anyways, and the big newly-filled boxes stacked on top of each other, slowly filling up freshly cleared space where shelves were.**

Yes, that sounds like an upcoming move - we will move into a bigger flat, since my stuff seems to have exploded (or maybe "popcorned") during the last months. This is largely connected to my acquiring some exhibition stuff (which includes two dress mannequins) and to the growth of the market stall and its assortment of goods, but also to such slightly mad ventures as the spinning experiment (which resulted in my having about 105 spindles now instead of five, and two more rather large boxes to stash). All this has led to the apartment being too small, and offering too little storage space.

So we will move, but stay in this very nice and quiet part of Erlangen. I will have a nice, large study/work room with no roof slope taking away space for shelf storage or moving around in the room, and enough space to actually do tailoring work in there without feeling cramped. And it is a ground floor flat - hooray for not having to lug so much stuff down from second storey when going to a medieval event!


* Yes, I'm a book junkie. And that is especially true for books on archaeological stuff, textiles foremost, of course. Book buying binges when in museum or exhibition bookstores is a very common quirk of archaeologists, and I'm no exception to that rule. Which means that not only do I have lots of books, I have lots of really seriously heavy books, because most catalogues are printed on thick, glossy, heavy high-quality paper...
** Compared to stacking books on the floor until stack height is still just stable, shelves are a much more compact way of storing (we found this out when emptying a shelf to re-build it with an additional bit a while ago), but even shelf storage cannot beat boxes filled with books and stacked up high. Much less convenient for actual reading, though!