Packing & Packaging

On March 2nd I'll be moving to a new home, which is one of the reasons the site updates have been a bit low this week.

There will be a few more new reviews uploaded over the weekend, after which I will be in full Packing Hell - that special zone where all the carbs and sugar one has consumed to stay awake and get all the residual clutter in some physical box hits the brain, and one is ready for one long nap.

Prior to that is the mounting tension that 'everthing may not fit'; that there aren't enough boxes or packing tape (not even duct tape); and that the emergency stash of protein (a burger or chicken fillet) was eaten last week, leaving little else to eat except toast.

I've moved the contents of a house and apartment multiple times over the years, and it's still the most evil and stressful experience around, and in packing up the media I've covered over the years, I realized Alpha cases and Jewel cases are Evil - not because of environmental reasons (that's a separate issue), but the waste of space they occupy in boxes, as well as shelves.

Some things are innately cool (the Masters of Horrror skull is an awesome mantlepiece), but then there are some of the early boxed sets where 3 DVDs are housed in a chunky Alpha which no one uses anymore.

Same goes for vintage CDs, like the early 2-disc sets that came in fat cases the music labels now use to hold 4 or as many as 6 CD sets. When these are all boxed up, the sheer poundage is phenominal.

I'm already a huge fan of the slim DVD cases most labels now use in boxed sets (they're lighter and can hold thin booklets), and one easy advantage to high quality MP3 albums is they take up hard drive or CD/DVD space - and nothin' else. As a collector, the packaging is a bonus, but when moving a few thousand items, that bonus is a struggle to pack up and store.

Doubt the theory?

The photo above shows CD and DVD cases occupying about as much square footage as a stacked washer-dryer (also note Fuzzball at the top, my fist-sized tiger who normally rests on the tip of my olde IBM keyboard, but is in the photo to assist in demonstrating a sense of scale). When I moved from a sixties bungalow (3 bedrooms, and one nasty mold-encrusted basement) in 2007, I also had to confront the issue of videotapes (Beta, VHS, SVHS, and 3/4" U-Matic) that were worthless, pointless, and useless to hold on.

Craigslist did solve the problem - a gentleman took the 2500 tapes I wanted sent to oblivion, and re-used them in a local school - but I wonder if collectors and journalists who have done a significant move ot two have dealt with the same issue: over years, a lot of media-related stuff really accumulates, and it's daunting as to how much is necessary as reference materials, and the rest is the precursor to collector insanity.

Anyhow, please be patient while the moving experience reaches its ugly conclusion, and there will be a batch of new interviews by next Friday, too.

- MRH