I have never met Timo in person. He is the Swiss bachelor who is renting my apartment in Brooklyn, and though the broker who arranged the rental tells me he is young and strikingly good-looking, from the tone of his occasional emails, I can only picture him as a finicky elderly gentleman.
Timo works for the United Nations and his diplomatic training has helped him to overlook my sad American standards of tidiness. He contacts me occasionally with friendly updates about how clean he is keeping my apartment, or to remind me that the Swiss are in general much neater people than New Yorkers.
For example, last spring he emailed me with a cheerful memo on the state of the windows. “I have been doing a little spring cleaning in the apartment, now that the sun is shining more frequently,” he wrote. “I will tell you, cleaning the windows was like working in a coal mine. I have never seen anything like it!”
He has been patient with me as I learn from him about cleanliness, and we get on well. Occasionally he even asks me for guidance in his missions of sanitation. In a recent email, for example, he wondered if I had any advice for treating the flooring, whose imperfections were quite harshly illuminated now that all the coal-mine dust had been cleaned off the windows. “The scratches were not as striking in winter, but really look quite unfortunate now. How did you use to take care of them? I am not an expert on hardwood floors,” he admitted.
I am not an expert on hardwood floors either, but if Timo would like to spend his free time polishing my engineered wood, that is okay with me. I Googled and sent him a detailed list of instructions, which seemed to make him happy. “I bought a mop and am planning to treat the floor with it later this week,” he responded. He closed his email with the winky-face emoticon.
***
These interactions have been good for our relationship, and in truth, it is important to me to have a good relationship with Timo. The totally bizarre intimacy of having a stranger live in my home and use my belongings would feel even more uncomfortable if I didn’t know at least a little bit about him.
My apartment is still furnished with all my things: The chocolate brown couch I spent a whole paycheck on when I got my first job in New York. The art I have collected piece by piece. The plain white linen sheets and down comforter I used to sleep under. But now Timo is using them. He soaks in my bathtub. He cooks in my kitchen. He probably even has sex in my bed—assuming there is anyone in New York City who wants to have sex with a fussy Swiss germaphobe. There probably is. I wonder if he keeps a bottle of hand sanitizer in my night stand for these occasions.
But, actually, that thought isn’t the weirdest thing about having a stranger live in my home. The weirdest, most uncomfortable thing about it all is the thought of Timo messing with my books. I wonder frequently what private things about my life and personality my library reveals to him. The thought is at once kind of embarrassing and kind of thrilling, like changing clothes in front of an uncurtained window.
Timo probably appreciates my neatly cataloged collection of Vogue magazines, arranged in chronological order, white spines lined up evenly and satisfyingly along the office bookcase. He may have nodded with approval if he noticed the few slim volumes I’d managed to read in French. Perhaps he was impressed at the breadth of my art books, which range from Sally Mann’s creepy photos of her dead dog to a gorgeous, clothbound catalogue of ancient textiles I bought at the Met one time.
I wondered if he’s ever stumbled on the one sex book I own? It’s not even a cool sex book—it’s more of a practical, how-to manual—but maybe it’s still enough to shock his Swiss sensibilities. I kind of hope so.
***
Recently, Timo sent me an email requesting permission to remove my books from the shelves. He wanted less clutter, he said. He would box them up and put them in the storage unit in the basement for me.
I surprised myself by being offended. It actually hurt my feelings that fussy Swiss Timo didn’t want my books around, and it dawned on me that the books we keep and display must be tied up somehow with our vanity. Or, at least, mine is.
I realized that I wanted Timo and anyone else in my home to recognize important, profound things about me when they look at my bookshelves. I had to acknowledge my secret fantasy that Timo would pick up my novels and see my notes in the margins. “What a fine mind that Kerry must have!” he might say. Or, simply, “Brilliant!” I wanted him to consider the fascinating fact that I love to re-read British murder mysteries, to absorb the philosophy behind my many cookbooks, to stumble on the boarding pass stub in my copy of The Wind-up Bird Chronicles—evidence that I am willing to read Murakami on vacation.
My library represents the side of me I most want to present to the world, not so different from an ultra-flattering photograph I might frame for my mother’s mantel. And I have to admit that my library is a little bit Photoshopped. There are augmentations: Several never-opened volumes decorated my shelves, including Anna Karenina, which I keep meaning to read, and Richard Ellmann’s hefty biography of James Joyce, which I don’t even lie to myself about. There are also omissions. I had purchased and thoroughly enjoyed each of the books in the Hunger Games trilogy, for example, but I didn’t display them in my living room.
Fussy Swiss Timo has made me recognize these choices, made me question the whole nature of collecting books. In the end, I think maybe we do this because books tell us something we want to believe about ourselves, something we want other people to recognize, too—that we’re smart, or interesting, or eclectic, or unique. This, of course, is why Timo’s request hurt my feelings. His rejection of my books felt like a rejection of me in some way, my tastes, my experiences, all the things I think make me special and interesting.
My books are now in the basement storage unit of my condo building, housed in dozens of cardboard boxes. My feelings about that remain a little bit complicated. The upside is that Timo almost definitely noticed that sex book when he was packing up. I like to think his embarrassment was in equal proportion to my injured vanity.
Tags: books, kerry folan, personal libraries, subletting, the butter
When you unpack them you’ll have to tell each and every lovely volume how happy you are to be back home. Pet it, whisper to it, and put it back in its rightful place on your shelf.
This is wonderful and I relate to it so hard. “Less clutter,” hmpf. Books do not count as clutter, Timo, has no one ever explained that to you?
“evidence that I am willing to read Murakami on vacation”
Oh bliss! It’s essential for people to stumble across and thoughtfully nod at such evidence. They don’t have to be the most vital people in your life, or the smartest, or the most glittery. Just … people. People in nice sweaters, appreciating.
I have given in to the convenience of using a tablet as e-reader when on vacation, instead of carting heavy books around, and my only regret is that the people around me don’t know what I’m reading or even that I am reading. Sometimes in a train car or waiting around at the gate in the airport, I briefly meet a stranger’s eyes and I am possessed by a wild urge to shriek, “You probably think I’m idly refreshing my Facebook feed, but I’m actually halfway through The Collected Works of Edna St-Vincent Millay! THIS IS BOOKS, I’M READING BOOKS.”
Oh my god this is exactly how I feel about my bookshelf and I too would be deeply hurt by this request.
Me too! I was initially delighted and amused by the description of Timo (I enjoy hearing about mildly persnickety people, they are fun), and then he asked about the books and my face did an instant D:
I think Timo is simply awful.
Oh hell no, I would never let the books go to the basement. I lost all my books in a basement flood one time in college, and NEVER AGAIN. Picky-boo Swiss Timo can wrap each book lovingly in clean white paper and put it back in the exact same spot on the shelf, if he likes.
That’s what made me the most nervous – they’re in cardboard boxes! There could be book-eating vermin down there! I want to go home & hug my books & promise I won’t let the silverfish get them.
So not happy about the idea of books in a basement. Humidity! Bugs! Flooding! Please make Timo take the books back upstairs!
Thanks for writing this! Very interesting.
That is such a weird request. Does he prefer empty shelves? Is he going to put a single knick-knack on each shelf? I would not agree to that request, not unless he put them back before he moved out.
This is an amazing piece if only because I imagine I would be feeling the exact same way- except about the initial questions Timo sent. I would have taken it personally that my windows weren’t clean enough or that my wood floor was damaged (which is dumb. Of course the windows and floor could be cleaner. Everything could always be cleaner than it is).
This Timo guy was hitting all the buttons is what I’m saying. He was waiting for you the flinch.
I had a landlord do a “cleanliness inspection” of my place once where she picked on my not having cleaned behind the fridge in the past year and having a dirty bathroom fan and said she would expect higher standards in the future and I was so angry and offended I moved out within a few months and barely spoke to her at the moving-out inspection (of course, I did not get a penny of my damage deposit back because I hadn’t cleaned the outside of the windows of my second story apartment and she said it “didn’t feel truly clean”). It’s been two years and I am still raging mad when I think of it or see her around town.
I once had a (generally terrible) landlord try to keep my security deposit because I’d forgotten to clean the oven. I was a baby youth at the time, first apartment, so I went crying to my mother about the injustice. She flew into a rage and went back to the apartment to confront the landlord, despite my mortified pleas for her to leave it alone; I was sure she was going to get arrested.
No one got arrested. I got my whole security deposit back. To this day, I’m afraid to ask how she did it. There’s a magic to angry middle-aged ladies that I can feel myself coming into, and I don’t want to spoil the surprise.
I got done on my first ever move-out inspection because you couldn’t see the floor as clearly through the oven door window as when we it was brand new. She actually pointed to a photo that showed the floor through the open oven door, and then compared it to the oven after two years of use.
We’d cleaned either side of the oven window, but she made us unscrew the two panes of glass so we could clean inbetween them. And yet the same woman conducted the full inspection and then demanded the receipt for our carpet cleaning – without noticing that there wasn’t an inch of carpet in the entire place.
Just a heads up, but many of these things were probably illegal reasons to withhold a deposit! It sounds like many of them would fall under “normal wear and tear,” which is to be expected and can’t be held against the renter. I’m not a lawyer, but please everyone check your state rental laws!
Twist: Timo needs the shelf space for his own massive collection of erotica.
See, that’s what I’m thinking because books on bookshelves are not clutter. If you empty the bookshelves then they’re empty and staring at you and even the Swiss don’t like that. (surely the Swiss can’t like that?) He’s gotta be replacing them with something.
My parents, who are not Swiss but live in Switzerland, have two Kallax bookcases (a 4×4 and a 2×4) even though they don’t have nearby enough stuff to fill them both up. So each “cube” has 3 books or a framed photograph or a knick-knack in it, and that’s it. It was surprisingly irritating, and all the more so because I also have a 4×4 and a 2×4 Kallax and mine are crammed almost to bursting.
This is always my issue with like, lifestyle blogs or home makeover blogs, they all have a few lovely decorative books, decoratively placed on their shelves, or laid in neatly-stacked piles with a pretty houseplant atop them on the bedside tables. I’m always like, BUT WHERE DO THE REST OF THEM GO?
Cannot get behind books as decorations/alternates to knick-knacks.
Ditto people who arrange their books by spine colour.
My issue is always with bookshelves (“bookshelves”) that are actually not rated to support the weight of being full of books. Like, they are only made to support the weight of one book and a basket of wicker balls.
My friend who is both Swiss and obsessively tidy (she says cleaning is like her yoga, specifically) buys tons of books and fills her bookshelves. So surely Timo too can clear bookshelves solely out of the need for more book space.
I kind of feel for Timmo in that living in someone else’s place is hard. Maybe he just wants to have some of his own things around?
What’s interesting about this is the assumption that the owner has read most if not all of his/her books. I guess it must be some combination of hoarder tendencies and librarianship, but I’ve probably read less than half the books I own. I pick them up at used bookstores or they’re from a class I took but never actually read the book at the time. Whatever I’m reading 99% of the time is a library book. Books I own are back-up. It’s my version of being prepared for nuclear war. I don’t have canned goods or cases of bottled water; I just have lots of books I haven’t read yet so if I can’t get to the library, I can still read.
I once had a slightly odd friend look at a bookcase full of books briefly and then apologize and ask if it was okay for him to really look at the books I own. He thought he was invading my privacy.
I’m the exact opposite (but also a librarian) – I only own books that I have already read and enjoyed enough that I know I’ll want to read them over and over again. If it turns out I hate the book, then I’ll feel annoyed at myself for having spent money on it. Having (non-library) books around that I have never read makes me feel like I’m sharing my apartment with a bunch of strangers.
I met my husband’s bookshelves before I met him. His vanity worked.
I sold the vast majority of my books when I moved to the Netherlands (I kept my books on soccer, and a few I thought might be useful for grad school). It was not as traumatic for me as people keep suggesting it is. I’m not sure why.
i accidentally learned a lot about the girl i used to sublet from when i leafed through her collection of books, which included numerous self-help type books with worksheets and such.
Because some people are in love with the concept of books as objects, and some people aren’t.
Before I became a librarian, I was in love with them, afterwards? Meh.
I love reading, but I’m not as entranced with owning.
Co-sign 100% but an academic. My life is reading-writing yet the books I keep are now mostly functional — however to accomplish the communicative aspect of reading and enjoyment I post on Goodreads….
Mine move up and downstairs between my office (limited bookshelf space) and my basement storage library (which is stocked with shelves, and which I wanted to be a writing office, but it’s too dark). When I start a new project, a big part of the pleasure is cleaning out the office bookshelves, moving books not relevant to this project back downstairs, and combing those bookshelves for stuff relevant to the new project. So now, I look over and I see this weird mind-map of the book I’m trying to write, which exists in an imaginary relationship to all those books over there on the shelves. And yet, the history of my interests and literary loves is neatly tucked away downstairs when I need it. (Also, I’m in a pretty arid part of the west, so my basement is reasonably dry).
This actually sounds ridiculously charming to me.
Yeah, it makes me so much happier than it should warrant. I don’t know if I’m more productive, but I look over to the left, and think “oh shit! get to work!”
I have a large collection of “literature,” an equal collection of YA, and a slightly smaller (but still pretty big) section of scifi/fantasy. I have a hard time giving away books (though I did donate/sell an entire bookshelf’s worth, MOM). I talk big about how YA and fantasy can be just as awesome as literature, and have just as much value- but my “literature” is in my living room, where the seating is and where people might congregate should they come to visit, while the other sections are in various, less traveled areas.
I should probably just get over it. I do think it’s a little vanity- hey, think I’m smart! But also I don’t want to have to justify my reading choices to people and I can’t help but feel judged when people give me the side-eye over my Maureen Johnson collection… Though knowing me, I’m probably just imagining that.
I think Timo sounds like a jerk. I can’t imagine moving into someone’s house and wanting to empty their shelves at all, let alone empty them of books.
That said, can I be a little bit Timo for a second? It’s The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, not ChronicleS. Singular, not plural.
I often feel the same way. I tend to use the Kindle app on my phone when I'm having lunch at work, waiting in line for the doctor etc. I always notice some people (usually older people) giving me disapproving looks as though to say "oh, those young people with their phone obsession!"
I'm always tempted to yell "It's a book! I'm reading a book!"
Ah, the Swiss (caveat: N = 1).
I have a Swiss friend I used to work with. One evening we were going for a drink together with the other members of our lab, so I popped into the office he shared with another lab member to let them know the rest of us were planning to leave in ten minutes. After that, I got distracted talking to the non-Swiss officemate for a minute, and when I left I said again, "Okay, guys, ten minutes!"
My Swiss friend turned to look at me and with absolute dead seriousness said, "You mean nine minutes."
I replied, "Oh, okay, you Swiss timepiece."
He found this hilarious, for some reason, so if you ever need a joke insult for Timo, there you go.
Word. I recently purged my bookcase of a bunch of books that I just know I won't re-read, didn't really like, etc. I even took the risk of clearing out physical books for which I also had the ebook version. There were a few of those that I kept though, mainly for sentimental reasons.
And I have 3 different editions of Anne Frank's Diary that I've collected over the years and no, I'm not giving any of them up. (They're not even fancy hardcovers or anything, but again, sentimental value is a demanding mistress).
A friend’s shitheel boyfriend wormed his way into my good graces by complimenting my books and my cat. I WAS POWERLESS TO RESIST.
I hear you on the books and the vanity. And I am fairly certain that I can never let a Swiss person see my apartment.
We had a Swiss subletter for two weeks. He polished all the taps with special metal polish that I’d never even heard of. I think he cleaned the oven. He also described our kitten as “a small rocket” (which she is!). He can come back any time.