Ever since I moved in to my little house, the garage has been a receptacle for EVERYTHING.  This fall, I have determined to clear it out.  It's oddly difficult.  Some things are hard to deal with simply because of size: I can't move them myself.  Some things are hard to deal with because they're hazardous trash (ie, paint cans.) and I have to make an appointment to be rid of them.  Some things are hard to deal with because they're hazardous trash and ARE NOT MINE--thank you people who left them behind, really, no I mean it; I would LOVE to dispose of your collection of car batteries and oh wait, there's a fee???  Some things can be donated (clothing, furniture that I can move by myself, etc.) and some things are just trash. 

But the hardest stuff to be rid of is the stuff that has perceived value to me.  This is what makes hoarders.  I look at these things and think "Someone, somewhere, will appreciate this!  I can't just throw it away!!!"  This is just not true.  80s cheesy rock cassettes, I'm looking at you.  Not only are they cassette tapes, which... who takes them?  Who wants them?  Who can play them?  Will they even still play?  Most of them were listened to WAY TOO OFTEN and were wobbly then and now they've spent three years in a garage.   Plus, they're my 80s rock cassettes, and I, um, had no musical taste.  For every good band I managed to pick up, I had seventeen cheesy hair-band compilations who knew three power chords and covered everything else up with glitter and spandex.  Even I don't want to listen to them any longer.  So where's the value there?  I've never been much for nostalgia and I have a short attention span.  So....

I cleaned out one large box of cassette tapes.  Pulled out nine that didn't make me want to cringe.  Even then, there's just a song or two on each cassette that I liked and I remember winding and rewinding and rewinding the tape to get to those songs.  Sounds like a case for an mp3. 

This is the logic.  This is the rational part of my brain.  And yet, there's still some part shrieking--you CAN'T throw cassettes away, even though they're probably damaged, no longer to my taste, and oh yeah, I don't have a cassette player.  Brains.  What can you do?


ETA:  Dear god.  I have found FOUR copies of Corey Hart's Field of Fire.  FOUR CASSETTES.  Three of them are marked in Sharpie: BROKEN.  Why I didn't throw them away then...  Why I listened to that album enough to kill it three times over....