Bejeweled

Remember how I recently posted about dejunking my stuff in preparation for moving to Virginia? I'm pleased to give a progress report, that I've actually been doing a good job! Right now I have 3 garbage bags and 2 boxes full of stuff to give to Goodwill. Additionally, I've condensed six boxes of stuff into 2. This includes tackling my horribly unorganized box labeled "Electronics" that was a mess of tangled cords. I wound up and put twisty ties on all the ethernet cords, and finally got rid of cell phone chargers from 2 and 3 cell phones ago.

My de-junking project tonight was inspired by one of my college roommates, Auburn. Auburn showed amazing foresight on more than one occasion. I remember how she owned an iMac, and I was baffled that it had no floppy drive. "How are you supposed to get files on and off?" I asked incredulously. "The internet," she said. "It's the wave of the future."* I had a hard time believing this (I mean, seriously...no floppy?!), but it turned out to be prophetic.

The occasion that inspired me tonight was also back in college. I remember Auburn bringing all her CDs into the living room and then spending the next few hours taking out each CD and its cover and putting them all into one of those big CD books. (You know, the kind with plastic pages.) After she finished doing that, she threw out ALL THE JEWEL CASES. I thought, "Yikes! But the jewel cases! How can you display your CDs?" Again, Auburn proved to have more foresight than I. But in this case it took me longer to realize the uselessness of jewel cases than it took me to realize that the internet really was the future of file transfer.

I mean, fine, keep your jewel cases if you have a fancy display case. But do I have one of those? No. My CDs have been sitting in a box for at least six years.

Inspired by Auburn's example, I tackled the CD box. It's a heavy box. In fact, I weighed it tonight. It weighed 25 lbs. That's a heavy box to carry all the way to Virginia. (Metaphorically.)

I took the box and spent a few hours taking out CDs and covers and putting them into a CD book, and tossing all the jewel cases into a bag. I filled an entire garbage bag with jewel cases. Anyone need some jewel cases?

The finished CD book weighs 10 lbs. That means I have lightened my moving load by FIFTEEN POUNDS, just by getting rid of these jewel cases. Isn't that the best thing ever?



* Might not have been her actual words. But that was the general gist.**
** Also, I realize this conversation makes me sound really old, but I promise, we did have the internet when this conversation took place. We also had floppy disks. Well, I did anyway.