a new solution.

Thing 1:The old
A couple of years ago, I upgraded our movie storage from a blue wire shelf to a massive wooden cabinet. It's really quite a lovely cabinet, looks just like sturdy wooden furniture that you might find at This End Up. Unfortunately, not until we got it home did we realize just how homemade it was. It looked okay on the outside, but the shelves were deep and short, so finding anything in there was an act of excavation. We tried to rig up some Christmas lights in the back to help the lack of light, but in the end we just watched fewer movies on DVD and used the Roku a lot more.

While we organized the movies nicely when we put them in, in the end things just got stacked up all over the place. As long as the cabinet was closed, you couldn't tell how awful it was. And we lived with it, because that is a money-saving secret no one likes to mention.

Thing 2:Keep, toss, and watch.
We've been purging movies around here, because we are finally purging that hated wooden cabinet. Our new storage solution is vastly superior, in every way except capacity. We made a first pass through our movies and managed to get rid of thirty or so without any pain. It remains to be seen how many will actually fit in the new shelving, at which point, we may have to part with things we want to keep.

We made three piles as we went: keep, toss, and watch. Because we found that we had a good many movies that we had bought (or had been given to us) but had never seen. So we can hardly decide whether or not to keep them without even seeing what's on them. The danger here is that this is the way to hoarding - keeping things for later, I mean. But we are motivated. We've already watched Moonwalker and Gigi, and we've started on Roman Holiday.

That being said, we went ahead and threw Downfall in the pile to toss, just because we can never work up the emotional energy necessary to watch a movie about Hitler's last days.

Thing 3:The new
Friday, while I was at work, Josh sent me an instant message, asking where the stud finder was. After acting as his stud finder finder, I asked why he needed it. And he told me that he was installing built-in bookcases.

I'm sorry, what? Can we talk about this first?

As it turns out, he meant shelves, and this was our solution to movie storage. He had bought the wood, had it cut, and was all ready to get to drilling holes in the living room wall. The electric organ incident came screaming back to me, and I asked him please to not put any holes in the wall until I came home and we could talk about it. So he did, and we discussed the wisdom of beginning a new home project when there were plenty of other things that were undone or half-done, and oh, the wedding is coming up, too. AND, before we start installing shelves, we really ought to finish painting that room.

By "discuss," I mean that I griped a lot while he scowled.

Finally, I agreed that we could do this if we also secured the backyard fence this weekend. We sanded and stained the wood, which was a step that he was going to omit before he realized that he would have to convince me it was a good idea at all. And everything takes longer than you think, so right now the boards are laid out on the kitchen table while the stain dries. Every home improvement project is a learning experience, both in what to do and how to peacefully interact with your co-projecteer.

It has been a squabbly weekend, which frankly has not boosted my motivation to plan a wedding. But despite our inexperience and our bickering, it appears the shelves will look pretty good. When they are done, I will be glad to be rid of the old cabinet and proud of our custom shelves. Until then, I'm just kinda tired.