Sophia - do you have anytime this weekend? If the task is too daunting and overwhelming you will probably never start, so do not look at your whole apartment as the task, look at a few drawers in your kitchen, or one piece of furniture that stores things, or the cluttered top of one thing. Take a couple of boxes or a shopping bags - one for trash, one for donate. do the area you have selected in stages - 1 drawer at a time, one cabinet door, one shelf. If there are things that you are keeping because they stir memories, consider taking a digital picture of them and getting a digital frame, rather than keeping all of the items or papers (I had a bag full of things from magazines back to highschoola nd college like this and just finally tossed them out this past year).

Yes, this. Also, "before" *what,* exactly? Before the bedbugs? Well, how could you know you'd get bedbugs -- you asssumed that your landlord would maintain a bug-free building.

Well, the bedbugs have been there for a while. They gave me notices that I had to clean, etc. so they could treat the bugs. I did that, but they weren't happy with the results. That's when I hired the cleaners.

eta: They've also recently blamed me for bringing in the bedbugs - I talked to an expert who told me there's no way for anyone to know how the bugs got into the building in the first place.

One of my shames though, is a stack of VHS tapes that I still have.

I avoided any guilt over my collection of videotapes by incorporating them into my living room design scheme.

I should probably get rid of most of my VHS tapes, but the vcr will be staying until I suck it up and spring for TIVO (or TI-Faux, or whatever). I actually use it to record video, although not as much as I used to now that I can stream most of what I want from hulu or wherever.

If anyone out there has stuff on VHS tapes that they want to keep and have converted onto DVDs, let me know--earlier this year, I bought a DVD/VCR combo that lets me rip discs. I'll be happy to do so for anyone out there!!

We are about to purge all VHS that mac no longer wants. I'll keep the VCR as long as it works and I can get cheap videos of kid stuff he has never seen. Street sales in our hood have lots of these.

It wasn't that long ago that we were still using a VCR, but now a VHS tape feels like bronze age technology.

Perkins, I do not understand your mom. Knowing they are from you explains why they are early? Is early a bad thing? She doesn't think she should now thank you?

I don't really either. I think early may be bad here, though I am not sure why. I suspect she is waiting to thank me on Mother's day, as a way of making sure I will call, which makes Momsense.

Am I the only one who finds VHS more reliable than DVDs? Sure, the quality ain't as great, but most of my DVDs are starting making problem after 6-12 months. And that's with several DVD players experience.

incorporating them into my living room design scheme.

Oh, lords of interior design porn. I wanna a. move in, b. go back in time and make sure Baudrillard will see this before writing his doctoral thesis, c. fuck a., when can you come here and design my apartment for me?

Thanks msbelle. I do have time to myself finally again this weekend, because theatre is over for the year. For those of you who did not know... msbelle is wise.