What happens when you spend a lifetime accumulating stuff?

What happens when you spend a lifetime accumulating stuff?
Some of my stuff

 

What happens when you spend a lifetime accumulating stuff?
Some of my stuff

One of my all-time favorite comedians was George Carlin, who passed away a few years ago. George did a standup routine back then, which he referred to one of his problems in having too much stuff. One of his solutions to having too much stuff was to move to a larger house, which would allow him to have more stuff.

As you get older and the years begin to pass, you accumulate a lot of stuff. I certainly have! Now that my home maintenance manager is retired she has plenty of time to get on my case about having too much stuff. Being the wonderful accommodating husband that I have always been I decided to make an effort to get rid of some of this stuff.

This is not as simple as it may sound. Guys, I will need your support on this. When you go to the hardware store to buy a 6/32 x 1/2-inch screw you cannot simply buy one screw but must instead by a box of them. This applies to 8/32, 10/32, various sizes of wood screws and, of course, the various nuts and fasteners that go with them. The end result is lots of rusting corroded hardware in perfectly good boxes that I simply cannot bring myself to dispose of. Again guys, you know what I mean.

The same of course applies to various sizes of wood, lengths of pipe, and pieces of plastic that may someday find a use in your home. I have been very good about some things, however. I threw out an entire collection of 45 rpm records in a perfectly good record storage box. I still haven’t decided what to do with all my eight-track tapes, especially since I don’t even know anyone who has an eight-track tape player.

I recently discovered hiding in the back of one of my closets a rack full of cassette tapes. I decided in order to save space, that I would condense them into one plastic box. The problem was the rack I found had two more hidden behind it; perhaps several hundred cassettes. I realized that they were all irreplaceable recordings of my famous (to me) radio shows. How could I possibly part with them?

Yes, I could take the time to input them to my computer and put them on DVDs but I have promised to do the same thing with my collection of vinyl records as well. Like most people I have thousands of photographs, taken with old film cameras, just waiting to be scanned into my computer. Yeah sure!

I still have boxes of what were once called ‘floppy disks.” Of course, I have nothing to open them with. Same goes for my collection of ZIP cartridges, another “latest thing.” Anyone need a 5 1/4-inch disk drive. How could I throw such a treasure away? Hey, this is my stuff we are talking about! I still have all my CD installation discs from hardware long gone. What do I do — just heave them?

We have discussed the possibility of someday moving to another home. Impossible! There would be no way that I could conceivably pack and organize all of my stuff so that would be accessible in a new location. In other words I am stuck with my stuff.

I guess I could just turn this all over to my home maintenance manager but I have watched her go through our refrigerator and food cabinets and throw out food less than a year after its expiration date.

I have no control over this and it seems like waste, but please stay away from my 6/32-inch screws!

My books: Anyone who has ever visited my house knows that I have literally millions of pages of books in wall-to-wall bookshelves. It’s most impressive to visitors who probably think that I am brilliant having read all of these. Well I have read all of them but to say that I understand them all would be an overstatement. For years I have carefully removed the jackets from these books as I read them so as to keep them looking fresh and new. The problem is that the entire collection could probably be placed in a $9.95, thumb drive.

Oh well, at least I look smart.


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