Obsolete

I am rapidly approaching the big five-oh. 

While it is obvious that I won´t get below morbid obesity by then, what I can do for myself is getting rid of those possessions of mine that no longer fit in with my lifestyle. 

Of course, I don´t have fifty years´worth of stuff around any more, as I have been decluttering with every move and several times in the last years, too. But I do have stuff I kept for almost forty of my fifty years that has strictly no relevance for my daily life today. 

So does DH.

Yesterday, we went for the vinyl rack. You know, every vinyl record ever acquired by both of us. Given that we were both voracious consumers of all things music, it was quite a sizable collection.

The kicker was that the last functioning record player in our household had broken down and was discarded.... six years ago. Well, it had actually broken more than ten years ago (ahem). 

We don´t intend to buy another record player, as we have our favourite music on CD (with few exceptions). 

So, the records were just taking up space. 

We don´t need them to remember the music we liked before the arrival of the CD. And after that, we both bought just CDs and no more vinyl records. We could both date the point when we got the first CD player from the dates of publication of our records. And, while these records had been well-loved when we first got them, there were plenty we would never buy again or even listen to today, even if we had a player available. 

So, we parted ways. 

And there´s another empty shelf in the living room.

If I were ever to replace my IKEA shelves with something else, that means three feet less of necessary shelf length to account for. 

And those feet add up. 

Removing all the things that are obsolete removes a lot of the clutter we have. 

Which reminds me that I should take a look at my tape collection, too, even if I still own a cassette deck.  The ones I would not listen to any more, and the self-recorded ones (does anyone remember sitting in front of the radio with one finger on the "rec" button to catch your favorite songs?) where I have no idea what is on them are natural candidates for eviction. Which means one or two drawers are going to be liberated soon. 

I don´t need the actual tapes and records for the memories to remain. And the space is something I can always use. 

Julia