Below the shelf with the boxes on is this shelf. It's one of two that hold stationery (the other is below it, as we'll see next time). It's a big taller than it needs to be, so there's a lot of wasted space; one of these days I'll move it up a rung and the shelf beneath it too, which will release more space where I need it for my computer games (two shelves below, as we'll see next next time).
The pile on the left is made up of card, transparencies, coloured paper, labels, pads, A4 notebooks, document wallet sleeves and a few smaller notebooks I've put on top. It also has some more exotic items such as carbon paper (all at least 30 years old, and some possibly from the 1950s), tracing paper and graph paper. This is where, when my kids would show up without notice and demand something bizarre they needed for homework, I'd probably find it.
The next pile has some more A4 books (quite nice ones that I intend to use but have never thought of anything important enough to want to use them for). There are more transparencies, more A4 pads and some smaller pads an notebooks that I take with me every once in a while. That small shoebox at the top contains my spare batteries; it doesn't actualy go there but on the shelf below, I'll move it...
Next to this pile is a green box and four notecard boxes. The green box contains everything I need to wrap up presents (except regular, clear sticky tape, which is on the shelf below). There are scissors, a hand-held zip-along cutter, pens that write on anything, sharp-bladed paper knives, novelty sticky tape, large rolls of sticky tape left over from last century before I bought a proper dispenser that uses smaller rolls, and glue. The glue isn't paper glue (I chucked that out ages ago when it dried up); it's superglue, used for when my mother presents me with the latest ornament/plate/cup she has broken while dusting. I also have the solvent I need to get superglue off my hands in that box, too. I suppose I shouldn't really keep superglue there as it doesn't really fit with the present-wrapping theme, but "it's where I keep my glue" so that's where it is. I have some polystyrene cement in there, too.
The four notecard boxes behind the green box contain records of my classical music cassette tape collection. If I want to find some piece that is on a compilation, this is where I'll look. So long as I got it before about 1995, there's probably a sheet for it. In fact, there will be several sheets, as I wrote a program to generate several sheets for each piece, ordered by composer (or composers) and name (or names) of the piece. Some of the records — all of which are on paper rather than card — are on lineprinter paper, from the days when I was a PhD student. I'll maybe show you a few sometime. The collection isn't complete because I lost track of the tapes I hadn't indexed when we moved house about 15 years ago; besides, the program I wrote (well, rewrote — I had versions for the DEC-10, Atari ST and MSDOS) stopped working with Windows 98.
Finally, the pile on the right contains assorted envelopes, paper bags andcard so thick that it qualifies as being board. If I need some brown paper to wrap up a parcel for posting, this is where I'll look if the roll of brown paper at the top of the cabinet to the left has run out. Behind the paper are some index cards bought in Los Angeles in 1995.
Oh, I like stationery, by the way. If I ever come into crazy amounts of money, I shall be buying as wide a variety as I can just so I can own it...