Life Laundry

Next weekend is life laundry weekend, the time of the year when one room or area of the house is blitzed until it looks respectable. This year the loft is finally getting a big clear out, some of the items making the trip to the dump don't have any particular sentimental attachment anymore, but then there's my record collection.

I first started seriously collecting records when I was 14 when I worked all summer at Max Factor, prior to that I had to save up pocket money which meant a trip every month or so to the local Woolworths to start buying up the Beatles albums. I stopped buying albums in about 1987/8 when we bought our first CD player. There are about five hundred albums and two hundred singles left in the loft after a big clear-up five years ago when I decided that my prog rock and heavy rock days were behind me, goodbye Genesis (Peter Gabriel era), Yes, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep etc - although all of Led Zep's albums survived the cull.

I've been looking at those ION/USB turntables that allow you to record albums/singles/tapes onto your hard drive, as I have two spare hard drives I thought for £120 it might be worth doing. I can keep the singles without taking up much space because they are all in proper singles boxes but the albums are just sprawled out over the boards in the loft. The problem is what albums, if any, should I keep? The Beatles, the Stones, Jam, Clash, Costello? Or should I just take them all down the tip?

I'll probably chicken out again by getting rid of old books, old childrens clothes and toys - but one day I'll have to make a decision.