I'm a packrat. Given the options of tossing junk or storing it in a box or closet on the off chance that I might need it one day, I almost always opt for the save. Mostly it's a fear of needing something a month, year, or decade down the line, and the possibility of frustration, remembering having tossed it out.

It's funny, because I let the future possibility of discomfort lead me to store telephone records from 1994 and peripherals two technological generations removed from my current computer (make that three. I found my thunderscan and macrecorder in a Mac Plus carrying case yesterday, (looking for something else non-tech, and very much wanted, which, ironically, I seem to have lost (but not thrown out. you don't throw out your favorite bedouin cloak you got in Morocco three years ago, but I digress.))).

Anyhow, I save and store to prevent the possibility of future frustration, yet I ignore the fact that dedicating two closets to boxes of what, until I have a sudden need for it, is crap, carries with its own discomfort, a discomfort that is certain, and is there every day. (Anyone watch Friends last week?)

Anyhow, with the prospect of moving, either across town or across the country, I'm finally consolidating and purging. 95% of what I use on a weekly or monthly basis represents only about 50% of my stuff, and I'd like to see how much of the remaining 50% I can find permanent homes for, be it gifting to friends, donating to charaties, setting out on the curb, or simply tossing.

The first thing I'm doing is consolidating my music. I'm MP3 encoding every CD I own, no matter how often or rarely I listen to it (I'm over halfway through, and the number looks to be around 240 discs). Those that I don't listen to often I'm going to burn to MP3 CD (so, 12 CDs on a single CD-R). Actually, I'm going to burn all the CDs onto MP3 CD-R, for archival purposes (yes, irony noted. Thanks.) and then get rid of the rest of the bulk. I rarely use single CDs anyhow. somethng about picking one artist that I want to listen to for an hour... I love surprises that come from the random shuffle of what will be when I'm finished encoding, a library of 3500 songs. I also like being able to carry that literal 9 days of music around in a single 12-cd case, or about a third of it in my iPod.

The next job is to get rid of all those 'old tech' audio CDs, and officially begin to lighten my worldly load.