Shackin' up (and movin' stuff)

The verb "to move" has its origins in Phoenician and several other Semitic languages, in which "l'muuvar" meant, approximately, "bringing oxcart-loads of clay tablets from one dwelling to another and most likely losing a couple along the way to the wrath of the gods." So it's nice to see that the meaning of the word hasn't changed too much over the millenia.

As E mentioned in her last post, I have some boxes (boxen?) of stuff in the basement of my old apartment. These boxes have things in them that I know I should get rid of, but irrationally can't, really--jewel cases for my large CD collection (the CDs themselves are, for the most part, stored in binders, in a space-saving measure that I made years ago), things I made in elementary school, copies of newspapers and magazines I've written for or was quoted in, that sort of stuff.

The problem, of course, is that our new place is already pretty much full from emptying E's place, which had to be done by May 31st. So now, aside from the one half-wall in our big closet and some space in the Man Room, there's nowhere for me to put the contents of my old place, which has to be emptied by June 30th (although I'd much rather have it done earlier and try and collect a half-month's rent back if my landlord can turn the place over quickly).

We've got some basement storage space at the new place, one of those big rooms full of padlocked cages that I'm sure some readers have seen before, but we can't seem to get in there yet. Once we have the right key or whatever, that's the space that would make the most sense for storing things we don't need to get at too often, but don't want to get rid of, like my boxes of stuff, my bike, our painting supplies, temporarily unused furniture, etc. But I also know that we BOTH have to go through what we have--E at the new place and me before I pack up the stuff in my old place--and do some serious culling.

I've always been the kind of person who liked to own, actually OWN, copies of things that are important to me--favorite books (and I'm an English teacher, which means I've got a lot of those) and CDs, especially. I've definitely gotten better at using the library when I actually have time to read things, but there's something about owning the book that's somehow better for me and how I work. It's probably because I'm also the kind of person who has four or five books going at any particular time, so it's good to be able to bookmark something, put it down, and pick it up again a month or two later to see if I'm still interested.

Then, of course, there's the other side to the whole thing:

The trouble is that maintaining a physical collection is expensive and bulky. There’s just too much out there in the world. Even after pruning the treasury down to only those records and books of great personal importance, you can still be saddled with mountainous stacks to maintain.

So now I just don't know. I've got a fiancee who, despite her amazing practicality on almost everything else, doesn't quite share my opinion that bookcases are meant for books, instead of for sparsely arranged photos. So I guess that means I'll be doing some serious thinking and sorting over the next couple of weeks, winnowing away at what I've got so that next time, for the next move, it'll be ME who gets to complain about who's got the most unnecessary crap to pack up.