on building a shelf. . .
When we moved into this house 12 years ago, there was a basic, yellow wood shelf in the living room. It had an assortment of books on it already – Sherlock Holmes, The Lord of the rings, some very out of date medical text books and various novels that I have forgotten. . .
Over the years, we adjusted it – photos on the top, our books added to the ones we inherited, a picture or sign here or there. I had a place for our manger scene at Christmas, and the board games and toys we accumulated filled the bottom shelf over time. David drilled some holes in it to fit a speaker. We adjusted the boxes to make them uniform (a friend, noting the eye-sore it was, gifted us some IKEA boxes that are still all over our house) and the bottom right corner became a magnet for little kids who knew it housed our Littlest Pet Shops and Tegu blocks.
At some point I color blocked the books, and David and I made it a point that no book could remain on the shelf that we would not be proud to recommend or lend out (to the point we often buy the book we read on Kindle to place on the shelf). Over time our photo albums migrated from America, and the girls grew up and new pictures were added. There are still 3 picture frames and a lantern we got at our wedding. We have added a wire tree from Italy, a shadow box of shells and rocks from beaches around the world, and a Lego-flower that Madeline brought us her first Christmas back from college.
We would talk about changing the shelf several times a year, but never got around to it. Then, last year, when we were building the recording studio at the College, I showed David a photo of a shelf the designers in Nairobi had made and he got inspired. . . he wrote them, designed the metal frame, and ordered mahogany boards from the local wood carver. 4 weeks later, I had my dream shelf, and as a creature of habit, agonized over where to place things, knowing the placement would probably follow me the rest of my life.
Strangely enough, people notice the books more and ask to borrow them, they linger at the photos and ask the story of the games. Our speaker hangs in a custom place and the blankets that were scattered around the room have a home. Every single thing on the shelf has a story – every book , every box, every game. It feels like a family history in a shelf. . . The toys remain in the bottom right corner, and I brought back books at Christmas to add new favorites.
The shelf was one of the last untouched things we hadn’t modified in our house since moved here (top pictures below are from the weeks after we moved in) . Now, we have changed every wall, both bathrooms, the fireplace, and David has built nearly every piece of furniture. . .it is a home, and our story, built piece by piece over a decade –
*bottom three are our inspo photos, middle is many many memories where the old shelf found itself in the background, and top row is week one in Kenya . . here’s to new memories with a new background that is a memory in and of itself
