Después de veinte años living in Spain, I've left Madrid for good. Just before the summer, we finally gave up the apartamento alquilado in the capital and moved everything to the village. For the first time in maybe a dozen years, I have all my libros, muebles y ropa in one place. El problema ahora is getting it all organizado.

Autumn approaches and there are still cajas y bolsas piled up and waiting for me to unpack. Parece que no termina nunca. But I have at least got all the books on the shelves now.

You'd think it would be easy to put unos libros en una librería, wouldn't you? Not for me. There are so many factors para tomar en cuenta, even if we're only talking about the fiction.

I like to be able to find things, so tend to sequence novels alphabetically by author; but I'm never sure the Spanish and English should go en la misma estantería. If I separate them, though, where do I put the parallel texts?

(Incidentally, these are useful para aprender el idioma. If you can't find them, or if what's available is a demasiado "literario", I suggest you buy a favourite novel in Spanish and trust to remembering enough details to be able to wing it. Alternatively, buy the same book in both languages and read un par de párafos o un capítulo in Spanish then re-read the same in English para ver qué has perdido. The more gripping it is, the more eager you'll be to keep going, and the less likely you are to get caught up on los detalles de vocabulario which make dictionaries so necessary and foreign language reading so pesado. You can usually settle for phrases such as, "the something man in the something jacket crossed the room somethingly" - a line I remember from a Chandler novel I read hace años: the same guy wore the same "something jacket" all through the book, which was enough to make him recognisable - even when he was dead.)

Back to sorting books: I have a shelf full of Graham Greene paperbacks and my sense of aesthetic balance balks at putting the three inch thick antología con tapa dura alongside them. Similarly, the tiny leather-bound copy of "Cranford" cries out to be put somewhere más seguro y más visible.

If I think about el contenido de los libros, rather than just the appearance, it's a whole different can of worms: Lovecraft’s "The Lurking Fear" sits uncomfortably between "To Kill  a Mockingbird" and "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe". And I refuse to answer for the influence of Brendan Behan's "Borstal Boy" on J. M. Barrie's "Peter Pan". (Or vice versa.)

Even so, colocar las novelas is una tarea simple in comparison with the organisation of music. Where in the alphabet do the Rolling Stones belong? I know Spaniards call them "Los Rolling", but I'm always tempted to put them under "S" for Stones. I suspect there are digital systems where you'll find them under "T" for "The". It seems it's (never) as simple as A, B, C.

Next I need to sort my clothes: should I arrange them by colour, fabric, type, season...?