What we keep...

[drewan]

In response to one of minnehaha's posts about what we keep, I wrote the following long winded response which I decided to post here instead.

Here are a list of things I keep and some examples of why.

Books I save because I like them. I do occasionally go back and reread some of them, and I like how they look on our bookshelves. We do occasionally prune our collection and give some away, but we never throw books in the trash.

Comics are like books, except I don't really have a place to display them. They are way to disorganized right now. I've thought about giving up collecting these, but then I really should just get rid of the whole collection. And how does one do that? For now I'll just keep them. What I really want to do is catalog them. I know! I should sort them into new long boxes, one set of current collections, and another set for series that I don't collect anymore. Then I should take a few of the really good issues and some how display them in my office. I'll get right on that.

I have some toys and stuffed animals from my childhood. The toys *could* be worth a pretty penny some day, and the stuffed animals are the few I kept for sentimental value. I keep telling myself I should go through these boxes and find what is actually valuable and sell it, and donate the rest to kids who will actually enjoy them. Of course, I know that if I start sorting the toys I'll have to spend a least a few hours playing with them... for purely sentimental reasons. Alternatively, I should find some way of displaying them. I do display a few toys around the house, especially my TARDIS, which I picked up at Gaylaxicon last year. I think a few Transformers could find their way onto display shelves, but I'll leave the He-Men toys packed away.

I have several boxes of school and work papers which I keep for personal historical reasons. This includes my high school writings, the odd news paper clipping about me or us, and old class notes which I'm sure I could replace with information from Wikipedia.

I still like to display my 5th grade knowledge bowl participation certificate, which my Mom framed. It shows that I was smart once. 

Misc software and other computer related junk, which I keep because I never know when I'm going to want to reinstall the Star Trek screen saver from 1995. Of course at the same time I can't find my installer for Mac OS 10.5 which just came out.

There are many boxes of cables, wires, and power cords. I save these because I think I'll need them again, and when I need them I can't find them so I end up just buying a new one anyway. Stupid.

I have a few things saved from my days as a member of the USS Phoenix, a long gone Twin Cities Star Trek club. Things like a photo album, fanzine, and t-shirts. I save these things to remember when my world was much smaller and one club was my life.

There are a few bins of leather related gear and Atons club stuff because this is an active collection and project. Unlike the Phoenix, leather and Atons aren't my life, just a fun part of it.

We have a couple bins of old t-shirts that we keep because the shirt was from a favorite concert or convention, but either it doesn't fit anymore, too worn out, or just too ugly. I'm hoping to not need to add another bin to the set, so I've try not to buy commemorative t-shirts now.

And of course there are several odd boxes here and there with holiday stuff, failed and abandoned experiments, and old electronics hardware. You never know when that old DVD player or Playstation is going to come in handy!

We used to have a lot more crap, but we really got rid of a lot of it when we moved, though our friends who helped us move would disagree.

Since moving we've tried to restrict our acquisition of new things, but it still builds up slowly. We just need to be diligent about not letting things sit around.


The rest of the stuff is rvrjoe775's.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I have been labeling cables, bundling them up tidily, and putting them where they belong. This makes me feel virtuous.

K.

cable label

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

That should make you fell virtuous!

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

When I start my sf library I'd be happy to put your comics in the Graphic Novel room.
And you would then be a founding contributor for all of history.

Cause how neat would it be to have a library for them?

[mizzlaurajean.livejournal.com]

I'm hiring out my culling services this summer to raise adoption money.

$10 -$20 per hour or an agreed on set rate. I'd be happy to spend a Saturday and Sunday helping you cull.

[drewan.livejournal.com]

Haha... sadly at this point culling is a personal experience. There is a fine art to knowing what to keep and what to throw away. It's bad enough when I try to cull some of Joe's stuff. He'll go back through the bag and pull half of it back out.

[benpanced.livejournal.com]

I don't want to even think about how much in original Micronauts was destroyed in the flood 10 years ago...