The Barnacles of Life
Jun. 9th, 2002 08:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqIt's amazing the amount of crap that can accumulate when you live in the same place for years and have lots of storage space to hold things.
When the Bruce moved out, he took all his belongings (aside from some furniture that simply wouldn't fit into his apartment). Despite this, our two storage closets were still full of stuff. The stuff was mine, which was disheartening as I pride myself on not being a Packrat. Thus began the great cleanup. Bruce's old bedroom is currently a big staging area for crap, allowing me to shuffle in stuff a room at a time without tearing the place apart.
My goals for the cleanup were simple:
Reduce my clutter to one closet (so that, when I get a new roommate, they can use the empty one).
Get rid of anything I didn't want/need anymore.
I've been finding the most amazing things - stuff I thought was long gone (as you read this, a lot of it is long gone - now):
Holt Stuff: Back issues of Grey Mountain Echos (the old newsletter for Grey Mountain Holt - AKA the Calgary Elfquest fan club), which I was the editor of more times than not. I also found the newsletter's slush pile - short stories, art, poetry and reviews vaguely related to Elfquest. Some of the names were people I've not spoken to in over ten years, which brought back lots of memories (some good, some bad, some just plain odd). The bad news is it was all created by teenagers in the 80's, and it shows. I kept one set of GME and tossed the rest. Grey Mountain Holt - it was fun while it lasted.
Elfquest: As the above paragraph will tell you, I was deeply into Elfquest back in the eighties. There was a time when I had to have any piece of junk with "Elfquest" stamped on it. Then I grew up. This was as the story was pushed past where it should naturally have ended. I stopped collecting Elfquest about six years ago, but most of my collection remains (there was an earlier purge which got rid of the truly craptacular spin-offs). I have put aside a set of the original 21 Elfquest magazines and the four Starblaze Elfquest collections. Everything else I've set aside as expendable (and will probably take to a used bookstore in short order unless I sell it to people I know first). Nowadays, when people ask me about Elfquest, I can loan then the four collections. After they have read them, if they ask "Is there any more?" I will lie and say "No".
Comics and Graphic Novels: As with my paperbacks, I am only keeping that which I am likely to read again. Going through the boxes I have managed to split it roughly into two halves. For any attempt to organize books, the greatest danger is finding that you've spent the last two hours reading one.
Gaming Stuff: I have over one hundred issues of Dragon Magazine (in the 20-170 issue range). I was thinking about selling these on ebay, but doing a little research I found that you can get all the early Dragon on CD-ROM. Drat. I find it's harder to part with the roleplaying game stuff - I keep thinking it's going to come in handy someday. Perhaps I need to be more ruthless.
This also got me thinking about Postice, the old Post Winter Solstice party that Grey Mountain Holt held after New Year's every year (Post Solstice - Postice, get it?). Tradition for this event was to have a charity auction (though that fell out of favor as the auction was generally longer than the typical fan's attention span). In later years this became a sort of junk giveaway. Everyone was encourage to bring books, comics and magazines that they had grown tired of and take back whatever they wanted. It didn't have to be one-to-one. The best part was that for the last few years we held Postice in the Tecumseh Mess hall (which is a lot more lavish than the name implies) and anything left over was added to Tecumseh's own pile of spare magazines.
I think part of why I have so much crap is that we didn't have a Postice this year (or if there was one, than everyone I know wasn't invited - This isn't as far-fetched as it sounds). In the past this has given me an excuse to clean out my detritus. I may try to organize one next year (i.e. January 2003) just for the hell of it. The last one (January 2001) was fairly enjoyable, despite having having a whole bunch of assholes not showing up. Actually, that's probably why it was so enjoyable.
When the Bruce moved out, he took all his belongings (aside from some furniture that simply wouldn't fit into his apartment). Despite this, our two storage closets were still full of stuff. The stuff was mine, which was disheartening as I pride myself on not being a Packrat. Thus began the great cleanup. Bruce's old bedroom is currently a big staging area for crap, allowing me to shuffle in stuff a room at a time without tearing the place apart.
My goals for the cleanup were simple:
Reduce my clutter to one closet (so that, when I get a new roommate, they can use the empty one).
Get rid of anything I didn't want/need anymore.
I've been finding the most amazing things - stuff I thought was long gone (as you read this, a lot of it is long gone - now):
Holt Stuff: Back issues of Grey Mountain Echos (the old newsletter for Grey Mountain Holt - AKA the Calgary Elfquest fan club), which I was the editor of more times than not. I also found the newsletter's slush pile - short stories, art, poetry and reviews vaguely related to Elfquest. Some of the names were people I've not spoken to in over ten years, which brought back lots of memories (some good, some bad, some just plain odd). The bad news is it was all created by teenagers in the 80's, and it shows. I kept one set of GME and tossed the rest. Grey Mountain Holt - it was fun while it lasted.
Elfquest: As the above paragraph will tell you, I was deeply into Elfquest back in the eighties. There was a time when I had to have any piece of junk with "Elfquest" stamped on it. Then I grew up. This was as the story was pushed past where it should naturally have ended. I stopped collecting Elfquest about six years ago, but most of my collection remains (there was an earlier purge which got rid of the truly craptacular spin-offs). I have put aside a set of the original 21 Elfquest magazines and the four Starblaze Elfquest collections. Everything else I've set aside as expendable (and will probably take to a used bookstore in short order unless I sell it to people I know first). Nowadays, when people ask me about Elfquest, I can loan then the four collections. After they have read them, if they ask "Is there any more?" I will lie and say "No".
Comics and Graphic Novels: As with my paperbacks, I am only keeping that which I am likely to read again. Going through the boxes I have managed to split it roughly into two halves. For any attempt to organize books, the greatest danger is finding that you've spent the last two hours reading one.
Gaming Stuff: I have over one hundred issues of Dragon Magazine (in the 20-170 issue range). I was thinking about selling these on ebay, but doing a little research I found that you can get all the early Dragon on CD-ROM. Drat. I find it's harder to part with the roleplaying game stuff - I keep thinking it's going to come in handy someday. Perhaps I need to be more ruthless.
This also got me thinking about Postice, the old Post Winter Solstice party that Grey Mountain Holt held after New Year's every year (Post Solstice - Postice, get it?). Tradition for this event was to have a charity auction (though that fell out of favor as the auction was generally longer than the typical fan's attention span). In later years this became a sort of junk giveaway. Everyone was encourage to bring books, comics and magazines that they had grown tired of and take back whatever they wanted. It didn't have to be one-to-one. The best part was that for the last few years we held Postice in the Tecumseh Mess hall (which is a lot more lavish than the name implies) and anything left over was added to Tecumseh's own pile of spare magazines.
I think part of why I have so much crap is that we didn't have a Postice this year (or if there was one, than everyone I know wasn't invited - This isn't as far-fetched as it sounds). In the past this has given me an excuse to clean out my detritus. I may try to organize one next year (i.e. January 2003) just for the hell of it. The last one (January 2001) was fairly enjoyable, despite having having a whole bunch of assholes not showing up. Actually, that's probably why it was so enjoyable.
