Ring out the old, ring in the older

To my great relief, the pile of stuff we hauled home from our trip to Indiana has by and large integrated itself neatly into our home. The camp chair and the various tools have all found new homes in the reorganized workshop. The table lamp now graces an end table in the big downstairs room. The automated cat feeders haven't been put to use yet, but we found space for them on the shelves in the workshop, so at least they're not in the way.

In fact, many of these new acquisitions have actually helped us fix minor but annoying problems. For instance, in the office, the power strip next to Brian's computer used to keep tipping over because it was so lightweight that the heavy cord plugged into the outlet would pull it sideways. Brian glued a couple of the powerful hard-drive magnets acquired from his dad to the bottom, and now the power strip is firmly secured to the metal filing cabinet it sits on. 

Likewise, most of the glass Ball jars we brought home are now on the top shelf of our pantry, holding various staples that used to be in plastic bags. Actually, most of them were double-bagged, with the bags the products came in tucked inside zip-top bags to protect them from both spillage and spoilage. This resulted in an unsightly jumble of identical-looking bags that made it hard to find anything because they all looked alike. The row of neatly labeled glass jars is a decided improvement. (We still have a few things in bags, but three zip-top bags look much better than a dozen.)

But the biggest transformation has taken place in our media cabinet. We spent the better part of a day hauling out all our old A/V components, testing them and the ones from Indiana, and putting back only the ones that worked best. As it turned out, it was a good thing we were forced to do this, as some of the components—like my 25-year-old VCR and even older cassette player—proved to be entirely kaput. We replaced these with a working VCR from Brian's folks and an old workhorse of a tape deck, and Brian hauled the broken ones down to the recycling shed. (This turned out to be unnecessary, since they were so old that they didn't contain any computer chips and could safely have gone into the regular trash, but the Department of Public Works graciously agreed to dispose of them for us.)

A couple of other pieces were technically still usable, but not really useful for us. The centerpiece of our old stereo system was Brian's old Marantz receiver—older than him, in fact—which we'd hauled all the way across the country when he moved here in 2003. But it had become increasingly cranky over the years, and it had pretty much reached the limits of Brian's ability to repair it. He reluctantly concluded that it should go to someone who had both the time and the skill to bring it back to its full glory, so we listed it on Freecycle as a project "for the audiophile and do-it-yourselfer." The posting immediately got multiple responses from people fitting that description, and we sent it off to a good home. In its place, we hooked up an equally ancient, but still working Dynaco receiver and a smaller, separate amplifier. This addition gave us more plugs than our power strip could accommodate, so we daisy-chained it with the small, square power strip we'd gotten from his folks to fit everything in. We also Freecycled an old set of Pioneer speakers we'd been storing in the back of the cabinet as a just-in-case backup.

One thing our new setup doesn't currently include is a record player. We own two of them—my old one and another we got from Brian's parents—but neither one is working properly. We've stowed them both in the basement until Brian has time to tinker with them a bit more. If he can't fix either of them on his own, perhaps someone at our town's repair cafe event next month will be able to help. (Watch this space for details about that.) In the meantime, we've got all the rest of the components—TV, receiver, tape player, disc player—hooked up to Brian's nice Polk Audio speakers, and everything sounds lovely. Brian also added his Iron Giant figure to stand guard on top of the amplifier and prevent cats from sitting on it, which would definitely create a fire hazard.

So, contrary to my fears, the big pile of junk we brought back from Indiana has not turned into another big pile of junk in New Jersey. In fact, hauling it all home turned out to be quite helpful. It gave us the kick in the pants we needed to test all that stuff in the cabinet we hadn't been using and get rid of the actual junk that wasn't usable at all. If we hadn't had this pile of stuff to deal with, we might not have learned our VCR didn't work until we actually wanted to play one of our old tapes, and then we'd have had to hunt down and spend money on a replacement for it. This way, we have a fully functioning stereo setup (minus phonograph), Brian's parents have less stuff in their garage, and two happy Freecyclers have new toys to play with. Win-win-win.