Three years ago,  I was contemplating a change of direction for the Holmes room in the house. Having given up on the idea of a 221B re-creation many years ago, and lacking the space and bookshelf walls of a proper library,  I decided that my Holmes room would have to be more of a “trophy room.” What I failed to consider at the time was that there was yet another option for my little hobby room: abandoned, post-apocalytic Sherlockian wasteland.

Having spent the summer in the more temperate lower regions of the house,  only stopping in the study to pick up or drop off, the local shrine to Sherlock had been neglected as much as the “Mazarin Stone” pages of a copy of  The Complete Sherlock Holmes.  Sure, rooms get a bit messy now and again, but this one actually feels like it’s forming traditions and going to start it’s own scion society of clutter.

The good Carter is fond of watching those reorganization shows on the Home and Garden channel. The first step professional reorganizers (sounds better than “cleaners,” doesn’t it?) is take everything out of a room or house and make the owners throw out a large percentage of it. But what if the whole point of one’s room is to keep the objects in it? Can’t exactly burn books or throw Sherlock Holmes in the trash, no matter how useless or non-decorative  a particular item might be.

Finding places for books means finding shelf real estate, which is still a current occupant’s market.  Some of the books on my floor seem to be waiting on the vain hope that a single bookworm will wander in and devour a copy of Everybody’s Favorite Duck.  But time itself isn’t going to solve this little problem.

To truly clean out the Holmes room would  takes the ice-cold heart of the executioner,  passing judgement on item after item,  condemning flyers  to the garbage bag an casting out those non-Sherlockian items to some less prestigious part of the house. (“Not the basement of no return!” they cry.)  And that fellow just doesn’t come around too often.

So, like those in many a field of self-improvement, the first step must be simply to admit one has a problem to one’s peers.

Hello, my name is Brad, and my Sherlock Holmes room is a mess. Pictues, sigh, below.

Your humble correspondent,
Brad Keefauver

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