Cleansing
A friend is having a garage sale this weekend, and I asked to glom off her yard, because here in the land of conformity in condos, I assume we can’t have one.
So I’m going through my CDs, VHS and DVDs, trying to cut back the waste. I can’t remember the last time I popped a CD in to listen to it. Put it in the computer to copy onto my hard drive, yes. To just listen to? No idea.
I take that back: I put a CD into my new car stereo to test it out when I first bought it. Other than that, the car stereo is strictly iPod only.
It’s time, finally time, to give up my attachment to some of the CDs. I’ve finally weeded them down to ones to sell. Ones that I’m not emotionally attached to, ones that I’ve already copied, either for the whole album or the two songs I only ever liked.
Unfortunately, that still leaves me a fair pile of albums I can’t get rid of. David Bowie. Nine Inch Nails. Ani DiFranco. Tori Amos, even though I find her albums to be horribly uneven.
But I still amazed myself at getting rid of some albums I really liked, back in the day. All of Stone Temple Pilots. All of K’s Choice. Guns N Roses. Smashing Pumpkins. I loved the music, and copied what I wanted, but I really don’t need the physical copies any more. Metallica, begone.
Then there was the pile of “I’m not sures.” Stuff I didn’t know whether I’d copied. Considering the two boxes of CDs I’d started with, the pile of these was pretty small. It’s only taken me almost two years to get through my entire music collection, as I’m now in the process of copying the last few things and sorting them into the garage sale box.
I also have a huge stack of copied CDs that I weeded out. “Archival” copies or mix CDs I made for myself in the pre-Ipod days.
It seems like a waste. I almost feel like offering those for free at the garage sale. Hey, if you like the CDs you’re buying, why don’t you take a few of these for free? Appreciate my excellent music sense.
Hah! Ego to think anyone would care what I listened to, what I’m discarding in favor of an electronic world.
I also worry that no one will love these CDs the way I have. I don’t have any hope that people will buy all of my mostly alternative music collection. (With a bit of Prince, George Michael and INXS thrown in.)
I would entertain the thought of offering the entire box of CDs to someone at a discount. $20? It’s yours.
I really don’t care. I want this stuff out of my life, but it’s not quite ready to go to Goodwill. I still can get money out of these CDs. Maybe the next step after the garage sale will be to slink into the record store and see if they’ll give me cash for my CDs. Please, no store credit!
I also have a pile of books that is in the same boat. I paid good money for many of them, and I feel they would be wasted at Goodwill or a similar nonprofit thrift store. I’m tired of trying to sell stuff online, too, and my fervor for Bookcrossing died a year or more ago.
I just feel like I’m ready to sweep clean some of the stuff that has been cluttering my life. I know I have too much stuff, and the piles of stuff set aside for the garage sale are just a drop in the bucket.
The next big change in my life is just trying to not accumulate so much stuff in the first place.
I can easily say no more CDs. It’s harder to say that about movies, but I try to be more careful about what I buy. I also am trying not to buy as many books. After having moved several times in the last several years, I have no interest in carting around more and more books. It’d be nice to go down yet another bookshelf, but I don’t think that’s possible.
I wonder what happens to people. You fit in your childhood room, sometimes well into adulthood. And your stuff all fits in there. Then you get a house, and boom! When I moved out of my dad’s house, I had a bed, a dresser, a computer desk, a TV cart and one rack for my movies, another for my CDs. I had too many books to fit in the bookshelf, but it wasn’t an out-of-control amount, either.
Then I acquired the hand-me-down dishes. I bought a Salvation Army couch, inherited a recliner and kitchen table.
I got more bookshelves. More stuff. Boxes and boxes of crap. Games. Video games. Curtains. Towels. The trappings of an adult life, mostly.
I threw out or gave away so much stuff when I moved from Niles to Fresno, but it’s not nearly enough.
Occasional purges feel good, but they just leave room to fill up with more.
I just up and threw away my CDs. Not all of them - if it was like NIN, Tool, something fairly recent and still in good condition, I kept it.
Just make sure you have backups of the stuff you’ve ripped. I’m working on multiple. It’s not like you can just go out and get that stuff for free if your hard drive fails
I’m having problems with my backing up anything right now; I actually tried the other day.
I think it might be Norton corrupting; Norton told me I should uninstall and then reinstall it. And then I thought, I don’t really want to do that today.
I think it has to do with some weirdness my portable hard drive has been having … so now I’m a little worried that even if I could back up my stuff — pics and music, I would miss you — that my USB hard drive is misbehaving.
Would this mean I need to get another hard drive? Esp. since I’m getting a lot of stuff on my computer lately? Heh heh. I’d love another hard drive. And another…..
so how’d you fare? everything gone?
I think I have a separate entry on how much I learned about garage sales.
The short answer is no, not everything sold. Not even close. However, I did get rid of some CDs and all of my unwanted DVDs. Not so many books, which is disappointing. But I also realized that most people don’t read what I read, either.
Not garage salers, anyway.
Most of the rest of it is now destined for Goodwill, I think. Though I’ll probably take the CDs to the record store and see if they have a cash policy, versus store credit. I *do not* want store credit.
RYC: It gets humid here in the summer, at least it did in northeastern Kansas where I grew up. I think the hearty plant should do well. It just rained last night, so I don’t have to water anything today!
When I was back in Lansing last weekend, I drove by our old homes–our Spartan Village apartment and 2-bedrrom house on Cooper Ave. And part of me was all nostalgic and part of me was like, “We could never fit all our stuff in there again!” Sometimes my possessions provide me with a sense of comfort and well-being, surrounded by familiar things; sometimes they just feel so damned heavy, fixing me to a place, and I just want to be done with much of it. But still, I don’t get rid of things. Not like I should.
Good for you for moving in that direction!