Saying fairwell to a collection

Funnily enough I went through big periods of collecting things, nothing unusual, just the standard stuff, CDs, DVDs and books.  I held onto these items like family members.

Before I completely embraced the 100 Item Challenge I was mid way through clearing out the books. I have kept the reference design books that I use regularly for my home staging work, however when I looked at the book shelves and the vast collection of read once paperbacks, I thought 'why am I keeping these?'  I travel a lot for work and pleasure and it has been known for me to get carried away at the airport bookstore, getting a selection of paperbacks for the journey or holiday.  I now recycle all the books amongst friends and the ones they don't show any interest (I do have a bad habit for really trashy novels) they are dropped off at the charity shop.

DVDs and CDs I thought I had a more emotional attachment to them, a movie evoked feelings that were important to me when I first saw it, or a rollicking good story.  My DVDs were heading up to the 400 mark. I had a major cull in January, selling off all the ones I'd bought in part of the 'deals' the stores offer, you know the type, 3 DVDs for £20 or 5 for £30, always very tempting, and in most cases I succumed to the offers.  After the initial cull I said to myself for the DVDs I didn't watch in 6 months I would get rid of them.  So now I am down to 5 DVDs

28. Priscilla, Queen of the desert
29. Murials Wedding
30. Balls (German Comedy, yes they do do them)
31. Queer as Folk UK Series 1
32. Queer as Folk American Box Set

These are all DVDs that I'll watch over and over again. I think you can gather I am a gay man from the collection.

I went to digital music some time ago, and now download everything, so that is handily stored on  iTunes, and backed up on hardrives and on my iPod.  For our wedding our friends got us Vouchers from John Lewis, so we put them together and got a BOSE system, which is marvelous and sounds amazing.  The old system was sold, so now we don't even own a CD player, so the CDs were sold  and yet another space is created in the home.

The only other collection I had left was my large record collection, when I was with a previous partner he had a big collection of vinyl and I felt it was something we could share together, so started buying lots of it.  I didn't spend a fortune, but each weekend we would go out and look around the various record shops in town and come back with shared finds.  I only really created the collection to have a shared interest, I do enjoy the music (but this is now digitised) and the art word on a record sleeve but I've not looked at them or played them in over 18 months.  So, I've advertised the collection for sale, and today secured a buyer.  I have sold the lot, and another wave of relief has washed over me.

The last lot of individual ebay sales has been listed this week, if they're not sold then they are going off to the charity shop.  The next cull is the wardrobe... watch this space.