Uncluttering

Here at 83 Durant, we've collected a lot of stuff.  This is the sort of behavior to which we are both prone; whether Lucy will be a similar keeper of things remains to be seen, but so far, her ability to squirrel away cheerios and peas in her high chair seems to point to a similar behavior.  Having a house with a giant basement serves to enable our pack-rat-ish tendencies.  Lately, we've been trying to limit our intake of stuff, and increase our releasing of stuff we don't need/want/use.  Here's what we've accomplished so far:

I did an enormous purge of books.  Enormous in this case means about 10 shopping bags.  I think this is enormous, but I should also point out that there are still many, many books filling our shelves.  Those books will go off to library book sales, where no doubt someone just like me will eagerly buy them by the bagful, excited about what a deal they are, and then line their shelves with them for many years without opening them.  I certainly hope for better for these poor books, but from experience, I know that I buy far far far too many books that I never get around to reading, especially at those fill-a-bag library used books sales.  

We've also purged a lot of old media.  We've been carrying around a box of VHS tapes for the past 5 years, despite the fact that we do not own a VCR.  What's the point?  If we haven't watched them in the last 5 years, chances are we don't need them.  So I freecycled those to a very happy family.  I've also let go of a box of cassette tapes.  This purge was a bit more difficult, and not as successful.  With the VHS tapes, I gave away the "real" tapes and just chucked the home-made tapes.  By home-made tapes, I mean, things I taped off of television, not home-movies or anything like that.  Surely here in this age of television on DVD and YouTube, there is no need for me to keep copies of episodes of Absolutely Fabulous, the Simpsons, South Park, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I taped off television with a VCR of suspect quality.  That decision was easy.  Not so with the cassette tapes.  I gave away most of the "real" music tapes, with the exception of a few that I'm keeping for our car (which only has a tape player), but when I hit the mixed tapes, I didn't know what to do.  Granted, they're a step above the taped-from-TV VHS tapes (although some of them do include stuff I taped off the radio), but really, do I need those tapes?   Aside from the tape deck in the car, we don't own a cassette player.  So they haven't been played for years and years.  But I can't quite bring myself to toss that box filled with 90-minute Memorexes with hand-printed playlists filled with exotic titles.  The mixed tape was once an art form for those of us of a certain age and persuasion.  I know my 14 to 24-year-old self would be horrified and outraged at the very thought of getting rid of such archives of music, such labors of love and hitting "play and record" at just the right moment.  The year after I graduated from college, someone broke into my car and stole a box of tapes -- it held 24 home-made mixes from various friends from various places and stages of my life to that point.  I was devastated.  They were never recovered.  I sometimes wondered if the thief just threw them out once he/she realized they were worthless (to him/her), although priceless to me.  Remembering this loss, I just couldn't bring myself to toss the mixed tapes yet.  So back into a (smaller) box they go, and back into the cabinet where they once lived with other defunct media, until a day when I'm a bit more vicious in my need to jettison the flotsam.

That's all for now.  Time to get Lucy at daycare.  It has been pointed out to me that although we've posted lots of pictures, the blogging has been lagging, so I'm going to try to get back into it.  Comments from our esteemed readers always make me smile, so please feel welcome to use that comment button, those of you who are lurking silently, and let me know you're there.