#828: The Ones That Got Away

GETTING MORE TALE #828: The Ones That Got Away

A year ago we did a massive de-clutter.  We had gotten to the point where we accumulated too much stuff.  Especially after Jen’s mom passed away.  We probably kept too much of her stuff out of sentiment.  But in a very short period of time we made massive purge; a painful purge.  And it wasn’t the first.  As you go through life you get rid of things.  You can’t carry all your possessions with you through your whole life.

Although I have forgotten many of the myriad DVDs, books, T-shirts and collectibles that I tossed to the curb, there are some that I now regret losing.  Doner’s regret is a very real thing.  Some decisions were made in haste and others were made without sufficient foresight.

I used to record all of my CDs and LPs to cassette so that I could play them in the car.  Once I had a car CD player, I didn’t need to keep doing that.  Eventually I decided to give away all my excess cassettes and that’s how they ended up in a Thunder Bay landfill.  I only regret giving away a small handful of my tapes.  I wish I had hung onto some of the more obscure ones, and anything that I made cool artwork for.  I guess I didn’t imagine that one day people would want to look at photos of old cassettes and read reviews of them.

In years past, any time I have done a major de-cluttering, I’ve thrown a massive garage sale.  Sorting through and pricing items gives you some time to process what you’re doing, and make final decisions.  It’s an ideal way of getting rid of stuff.  But even so, I have made mistakes that I regret now.  My childhood rock magazine collection — what I would give to have some of those issues again.  They would come in handy with what I’m doing now.  I had just about every issue of Hit Parader from 1987 through to 1990.  From there I moved on to RIP, Metal Edge and the various guitar magazines available.  When I purged my magazines, I hung onto just a small handful, but knowing they were irreplaceable, I kept all my M.E.A.T.  Thank God I did!  I’d never be able to replace them all if I hadn’t, and those things have been invaluable research sources.  At least I know my magazines went to a good home.  My old friend Len came to the garage sale and took every one.  I know he is someone who would appreciate them for what they are.

I got rid of the magazines when I got married.  I had to make space for my awesome new wife and her boxes and boxes full of clothes!  Around the same time, I passed all my old Star Wars toys down to my sister Kathryn.  Again, I have no regrets.  They went to the right person to care for them.  I admit I do get a nostalgic craving to hold my Han Solo one more time, but I think that could be arranged if necessary.

More recently, I’m kicking myself for giving away all my Star Trek DVDs.  All the movies (I had the double DVD collector sets), and all the seasons of the Original Series.  The entire “Fan Collective” series, which were so good.  Gone in one trip to the Goodwill store.  Decision made far too quickly and I’ve been regretting it ever since.  Why donate instead of sell?  Because we were trying to do this very quickly.  Hiring an organizer is expensive.  Getting a couple bucks per disc wasn’t worth trying to hawk them all.  I put them in a huge bag, dropped them off at Goodwill and tried to feel good about the regained space.

Don’t get me wrong — I needed the space.  But my purge went too far.

So now I have to re-buy all the Trek movies.  I can do without the series as they are all on Netflix, but I need the films back.  I don’t know what to buy: blu-ray, DVD, whatever has the best content?  This would have been simpler had I just kept them all.  A couple weeks ago I re-bought an old Star Wars comic that I somehow lost.  It must have left the house accidentally jammed between something else because I never would have gotten rid of issue #47, “Droid World”.  It’s the only issue that means anything to me and the only one I want to have.  I used to try and draw all the different robots inside over and over again.  Cost me $5 to replace, but oh well.  Never should have left the house.

At least I didn’t let a single CD go.  That organiser tried, oh did she ever try.

“So what are we doing with these?” she asked about the three CD towers and numerous mountains of dics in my workspace.

“These are all staying.” I replied bluntly.  “These are my life and they are non-negotiable.”

“You know that you can put all of this on a computer now and not have to worry about storing all of these?  I mean when can you listen to all of this?”

The same questions everybody asks.  Everybody who’s not a music fan that is.

“I’m putting them on my computer all the time.  That’s what this setup is for.  But I collect CDs, some of these are irreplaceable.  I love them all.  I could tell you where I got almost every single one.  I read the notes inside.  I look at the artwork.”

Trying to explain it was like talking to a wall.  “But all that stuff is online!”  She was begging me to reconsider but guess what.  I still have all my CDs.

Still trying to work on a decent storage layout, but I’m not a carpenter.  I can barely hammer a nail.  I need people to help with stuff like that.  It’ll happen one day.  But the discs. aren’t. leaving.  And just on a logistical level, I need to have my music backed up to a hard copy like CD anyway just in case something happened to my 2-terrabyte digital library!

 

I would never recommend hiring a professional organiser to any of my music fans.  They won’t understand your needs and you could end up making mistakes.  Don’t make the same ones I did, but do stick to your guns when it comes to your albums!

 

 

36 comments

  1. There ya go.

    I guess organizer lady doesn’t understand copyright law if she was suggesting you rip all the discs and then sell them. Oblivious philistines! Physical media forever!

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    2. No that’s just a cheap set with all the movies. My old DVDs had extended versions, deleted scenes, audio commentary…I don’t want to spend more money and not get that.

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      1. There’s twelve discs on that set. I read a review saying that it had all the special features from the DVDs and more in the case of the original films. The only thing it’s missing is the director’s cuts of the first two films. And how cheap did you get your DVDs? That set is pretty affordable for 1080P.

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      2. Oh bullshit. The Canadian one has less content. Fuck, America wins again. It’s about the same price too. Cheaper used. Only 10 discs for Canada, 12 for USA.

        Canada still sucks!

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        3. Perhaps he shall, with the right suggestions in that chip I installed. It seems to be malfunctioning though. I programmed him to like Judas Priest a lot more than he actually does.

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  2. This is painful. Biggest regret for me is tossing my vhs collection. I had 2 garbage bags full of self recorded vhs tapes. I had spent years taping music videos and interviews of music channels . I knew there was this guy from famous local band who had started transferring vhs tapes to other media but I didn’t personally know the guy and wasn’t sure if he would have wanted my collection. Had over 120 vhs tapes full of music. I had handwritten lists on the back of each of them which videos they had. All gone. Seeing your taped interviews reminds me of my tapes. I still have my magazines. So I share your pain.

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  3. I hear ya Mikey.
    I got buzzed on CD’s once 1988 rolled around I was picking up discs like crazy and vinyl took a back seat and in between moving a few times in the early 90s I got tired lugging about 400 records so I gave them to a friend who is now out of town.
    He still has them but I could never ask for them back as I gave them to him to keep but once I hit 50 a few years back all bets were off..
    I think I getting close to that 400 mark again..but this time I’m keeping them! lol

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    1. I can relate. Back in the younger years I used to move a lot and taking down the record shelf and all the vinyl and rebuilding in the new place took some effort. Got pretty good at it.

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    2. The problem is records are so expensive now. Is there still such thing as a 25 cent bin? Tom had the best 25 cent bin. I found two autographed Helix in there. I think he ended up just giving them to me for free.

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  4. I feel ya Mike!. I regret giving away my CDs 6+ years ago when we moved from Atlanta to Charlotte. At the time, I never thought I would need them again, but I didn’t know I would have a blog where they would come in handy. I’ve started rebuying or getting on vinyl, but that would have saved me 1,000’s of $ as their were a lot of CDs.

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    2. My issue with getting old cds is that I sometimes keep buying the same one again not remembering that I already have it. So I have a few duplicates.

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    1. She was on TV one night and I had to tell Jen to turn it off. She was teaching people to fold T shirts properly. I said, “Jen the T shirts are not our problem.”

      Family Guy did an episode about her where Lois decluttered everything from her house including the family.

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    2. I heard a stand-up comedian one time, saying how she bought Kondo’s book, and it told her to throw out everything that wasn’t essential. So she threw out Kondo’s book. And she had to admit, she felt a whole lot lighter afterwards. Haha.

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  9. I didn’t even know Professional Organizer was a thing. I mean, I know of Marie Kondo, but still.

    Anyway, I hear you on the albums. And I’ve done two big purges of stuff over the past two years. CDs, LPs, you name it. I work in a place where it’s very easy to get an album for $1, so I lugged a lot home. They build up. It just comes down to deciding if you bought it on spec, or if you bought it to own it forever. I let go of a lot of the stuff I bought to try it out (because it was so cheap to begin with). Freed up tons of space. Hopefully I can restrain myself a bit more, going forward. I, like you, did not get rid of anything essential. So far, I haven’t regretted anything that went out. Of course, every CD that comes through the door goes into the iTunes immediately, so even if the physical copy left, it’s still here digitally.

    As for organizing, all my stuff is in IKEA shelves. The CDs are in Gnedby shelves, and the LPs are in Kallax. Neat and tidy, suited to purpose, easily accessible. They even all match in colour. Also easy to build, and cheap to buy (and surprisingly not cheap in quality, they’ll last as well as any spinner or other CD shelf out there). If we ever get through this corona thing, you’re welcome to come up and check it out. I’ll BBQ some steaks, make a day of it!

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  10. I got rid of most of my Star Trek Movie DVDs when I upgraded them to Blu-ray. I was going to go through every film and compare the features on each to see if the DVDs were worth keeping. But it had been about 10-15 years since I had gone through any of them and thought, OK… which are the important ones that I still remember and are they on the Blu Ray discs?

    For me, it was the commentaries, including Bill’s wild one for Star Trek V and they are all intact on the Blu ray. And the same went for anything else I thought of except for the interactive menus. So, the Blu-rays might be missing something, but am I missing it if I don’t even remember having it? And am I going to keep a disc just to play with the menus?

    I ended up only keeping TMP’s Director’s Edition which did not make it onto Blu-ray, Star Trek II for the extended edition (even though I prefer the theatrical one. Pacing is important to me), and the Next Gen movies which I don’t care to upgrade. I’m sure you can find the DVDs at thrift stores though. I do see them from time to time.

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    1. You know what? I think I am generally going to copy what you have done. I mean we even agree on the Wrath of Khan director’s edition. I prefer the theatrical one too, it has better pacing. But I want the other one too, just to have it.

      Yep, more or less copying what you did.

      Still would have been easier if I just KEPT THE 10 MOVIES.

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  11. When I first got into CD’s I got rid of most of my vinyl records, I somewhat regret it, but I own alot of music as it is, and I made the decision years ago to stick to one format to collect and I chose CD’s. I now own close to 5000 and keep buying them because they are so cheap. I was around 27 when I get rid of all my rock magazines, and had just about every issue of (s)Hit Parader, Circus, Creem Metal, Faces, Rock Scene, MetalEdge from like 1985 til maybe 1990. Also Rip Magazine, but when I meet my other half, I knew I could not keep lugging all those magazines around, so I gave them away. I sometimes regret doing so but I can’t keep everything!

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    1. No you can’t keep everything that is for sure. It’s a shame because some of the info in those old magazines you will never find online. Guaranteed.

      5000 CDs is a good number! I have no idea where I am now.

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