in which we do something i thought i'd never do: say goodbye to our vinyl

Through all our years together, and all the different places we have lived, Allan and I have hung on to our large collection of vinyl LPs.

Most people I know who are old enough to have lived in the vinyl era stopped listening to LPs with the advent of CDs, and got rid of their LPs some time after that. We never understood this. We couldn't possibly re-buy all these albums on CD, so why wouldn't we keep them?

We must have weeded some duplicates when we first moved in together -- although we still have at least four copies of "Exile on Main Street" (one is autographed by Keith). The core of my own collection was inherited from older siblings, so dates back to the early '70s.

We did replace well-worn favourites with discs over the years, but even then we kept the LPs. Of course we have much of our music digitally now, but still. No vinyl left behind.

And now, suddenly, I'm OK with it. With an impending move to the other side of the continent, I'd like to lighten our load  -- both for moving, and for how much space we need to live. Allan would rather cull the collection down to essentials. But I don't want a small LP collection. I want our collection or none.

Before we make any drastic moves, we're cataloging all the titles, so I can see what we already have on CD, what we need to download, and what's not worth keeping in any form. Do I really need "Frampton Comes Alive" and "Rumours"? When was the last time I listened to Yes? Good lord.

Amazingly, I also suddenly feel ready to really downsize, which means the unthinkable -- getting rid of large quantities of books. I love books as much as I ever have, but I no longer feel the need to own them. This is not a battle I would ever win, so I'm not taking up the cause. For his part, Allan is scanning mountains of paper, as hard drives take up a lot less space.