During last weekend and this I’ve been clearing out stuff from my room. Mainly books, but also magazines and vinyl albums. This has brought lots of mental conflict.
The enemies: “It’ll come in handy.” “’I might want to use/read/listen to that one day.” “I’ve had that since …”, “These album sleeves are such nice pieces of art.” “One day I’ll get around to transferring them to digital form.” “This might be saleable/a collectors’ item, if not now then one day.”
The allies: “Have you used/read/listened to this in the last 12 months?”, “Is it a good use of space to plan to keep magazines you tend to buy at a rate of at least two a month?” “You can listen to this free on We7 or Spotify if you actually want to hear it. If you’ve never done so, or only listened once, why keep the vinyl?” “Is any collector interested in well-used scratched crackly vinyl with a worn sleeve?” “Reading magazines in the toilet is a bad habit.”
The victory: four bags of books went to Oxfam, as did a bag of Computer Music , Mojo and Word. Half my vinyl collection went the same way.
The failure: half my vinyl collection stayed; only a handful of albums too worn to give away went to the bin; I rescued one at the last minute.
The paralysis: two feet of shelf space occupied by diaries and notebooks. I want to shred them but haven’t got the balls.
The result: tidier shelves, a lot more space, enough albums to occupy several weeks full time digitising (which will not happen), and still plenty of toilet literature.
I am impressed at your mental fortitude. I have been trying to tidy my back room for ages. I just look at it and all will vanishes as I feel the pit of despair opening up underneath me. I am starting to equivocate about buying storage boxes. I would still have the same amount of crap only neatly positioned.