(no subject)

[nisaa]

All of our record albums are gone. Gone. Ok, I willingly let them go. But all the Depeche Mode albums, all the Duran Duran, Sting, Smiths . . . they're all gone.

Meat is Murder was the reason why I became a vegetarian in my formative high school years (and it must have marked me because people still think I'm a vegetarian til this day). Arena was the live album from the first concert I ever went to. I think the Sugar Hill Gang album was the first one I ever bought. A tiny voice inside me cried "NO!!" as she flipped through the China Crisis and Black albums. I mean, I haven't played them in about 3 1/2 years but still, there will be a void in my life without the vinyl. Don't worry, I made a list sometime last year of the lot of them in case I ever want to replace them with cds.

I stood at the back of my station wagon while the owner of Benway records combed through the boxes of albums and held up each record she was interested in to the late afternoon sun to inspect for scratches. Halfway through, she told me she sells record players. I was tempted to tell her to stop right there, give me back all the albums and sell me one of the turntables. But I didn't because 4 1/2 years ago, I vowed that I wouldn't move again with all of these albums. I got nearly $100 for about half of them.

I brought the rest of them to Out of the Closet to donate. As I left, I caught the employees going through them and one picked out the soundtrack to The Wiz.

Everyone I talked to in the course of my record album purge seemed to envy my upcoming move to the Bay area. I know it'll all be worth it. But for now, there's a whole lot of stuff to comb through at my apartment - things to recycle back into the world. Do I really need to keep my copy of Gogol's The Overcoat? What about the Russian-English dictionary my dog chewed up when she was just a few months old?

These are the tough questions I face in the next week and a half. Next up are all the video tapes I'll never play again. Except the video of my wedding. I won't be giving that one up.

Comments

[tawny-vixen.livejournal.com]

You may want to transfer your wedding to DVD. I don't personally know where/how to do that, but I'm pretty sure you can. (Of course, you have plenty of geeks handy, so you probably already knew this.)

Good luck!

Jaluka Scatterlings

[stevefava.livejournal.com]

It was the only album that MTV made me buy

[queen-of-wands.livejournal.com]

When I was packing to leave California a friend told me how she was culling her things and I found it very useful. If I came upon something I wasn't sure about, I would ask, "Do I have a fully yes to this thing?" If I did, I'd keep it. If I was saying something like, "Well, maybe, you never know when this might come in handy even though I haven't looked at it in five years and it's replacable . . ." then I culled.

[waylay.livejournal.com]

I SO know what you're going through. Moving to england entailed me getting rid of about.... 85% of my stuff. A bit of it is boxed up at Brian's house (LARP and Pennsic stuff and summer clothes) and some of it (memories, photos, and valuables) is boxed up at my Dad's house), but the rest got sold, donated, or given away to friends.

It is painful, but it is also incredibly freeing. I find myself being much more careful what I buy now, because I realized how much stuff I owned that meant nothing to me, or that I never used.

My 3 step process for culling:

Step 1: Make 3 boxes: Box of things to keep, Box of things to get rid of, Box of things I'm not sure of. Every week or so, I would go through Box of things I'm not sure of, and see if I had changed my mind on any of it.

Step 2: After a few weeks, get a few friends over to look through Box of things I'm not sure of. Explain why I might want to keep each thing. Sometimes just sharing the memories associated with the thing made me realize that the thing itself was no longer important - the memories were. Sometimes a friend would smack me in the back of the head and tell me to get rid of it. Sometimes a friend would say that she would be honoured to take the thing for me, and that if I ever wanted it back, I could have it.

Step 3: Put everything I hadn't decided on into a storage space. Wait a few months. Come back. Time and the fact that you're paying money to store this stuff makes things a lot clearer. ;)

[nisaa.livejournal.com]

Thanks! That is very valuable advice. I will make the 3 boxes this weekend and look through the Maybe box next week before we move.

[calialleykat.livejournal.com]

Keep photographs and any media of people you love regardless of format. Keep love letters no matter how old. Keep all adress books. I allowed myself 2 boxes of the books I Could Not live without,(mostly Heinlein, pagan and Robinson) everything else you can always get again used.
Stuff is just stuff, friends and lovers are forever.

[nisaa.livejournal.com]

Thank you so very much. I woke up and saw your message and immediately went to the box I had put all my old letters from friends, ready to throw away.

While I prefer email as a method of communication these days, I have friends from Europe with whom I've had snail mail correspondence for years. That's kinda special and I should definitely keep them.

[calialleykat.livejournal.com]

My pleasure. I spent most of last weekend going through the stuff I just got back from LA, and found pictures of my family and me, letters and mementos going back to nursery school and pictures I'd taken going back to high school. Although I love my digicam, my old Minolta may be coming out of mothballs. I Like print film, the hands on-ness of it and even the anticipation of sending the rolls in and waiting to see if they came out as good as you hoped. I have almost no hard prints after 2002, when I bought David a digital camera for his birthday.
I think I'll start making prints of my saved digital pictures also, just for continuity.
Besides, wonderful as digital images are, they are never more than a spilled can of coke away from disaster.

[bdot.livejournal.com]

i heard you are in alameda now (came here from mactavish who is a friend of one of your friends, i guess.

i lived in alameda for 4 years (recently moved to mountain view) so if you want any tips on where to eat and such, let me know! welcome to norcal!

[nisaa.livejournal.com]

Yes, please give me your favorite places to eat, drink and be merry in Alameda! You can write it here or email me at nisaatbl AT Yahoooooo!

So far I've found the dog park, the health food store, Trader Joe's, the Credit Union, an Irish pub and a Tiki lounge (but haven't been to have a drink yet) and Julie's tea garden.

Thanks!!