A thing I've been pondering today: the extent to which we associate cleanliness with emptiness (and also the extent to which we apply that idea not just to how we organize our spaces but how we approach topics like mental health, relationships of various kinds, and even the types of personalities we seek out and try to cultivate). I'm not sure that we necessarily perceive clutter as "dirty" in *precisely* the same way, but we definitely have a similar view of it that makes it relevant in this discussion as well.

And then the clutter got me thinking about libraries. Somehow old-school libraries (and, it occurs to me, old-style museums) come off as cluttered even in their natural states, which could partly explain the zeal across the country to renovate and modernize them by *REMOVING MANY OF THE BOOKS* and prioritizing the addition of more open community spaces. (Having recently *finally* visited the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, I'm also inclined to think of more modern museum exhibits here -- I definitely dislike said exhibits, and somehow they come off as less *organized* to me than the more classic designs even though they may boast greater economy of space and cutting-edge technological effects and whatnot.) So the modern library is "cleaner" while being less effective at performing the function so many of us expect a library to fulfill -- namely, having a whole buncha (obscure) books for patrons to browse. And I guess that's okay, to the extent that libraries are absorbing the functions of community centers. But I personally prefer the books.

And I also got to thinking about this: a classic library with all of the books shelved in their proper places -- as in, according to whatever organizing principle that makes it easy enough to look up and locate particular books via the library inventory -- looks identical to a library in which all of the books are shelved but not according to any system whatsoever. One inclined to evaluate the libraries in terms of apparent "cleanliness" would rate them equally clean, even though the former is accessible and the latter is a recipe for extreme frustration. And I'm inclined to say that, supposing one had sufficient tables and aisle space to stack books in various places not on the shelves but according to *some* attempted organizing principle -- supposing one had tried to get the sci-fi books stacked on one table here; suppose one is working on a stack of romance novels in an aisle elsewhere -- that disarray would be preferable to the latter "clean" library in terms of functionality (if you wanted a sci-fi book and you knew about that table, you'd stand at least a better chance of locating it more quickly) even though it would clearly present as more visibly cluttered and therefore arguably more "unclean."

Anyway, this is the stuff I was pondering today, and I'd be curious to expand it further with reference to mental health approaches etc. Thinking things is fun. ????????