Rant #3,293: House of Fun

I just had a pretty inconsequential weekend.

Weekends seem to be the most difficult part of my rehab, as generally, I have nowhere to go and not much to do.

This past weekend, I made myself a task: to get all my 45 RPM records into receptacles that I could handle and access without fear of damage to me, or to my collection.

As you know, they had been placed in drawers in a heavy plastic dresser, and when I went to access them several weeks ago, one of the drawers I opened became detached, and the entire contents of that drawer fell on me, tearing my quad in my left leg for a second time.

Since that time and through my newest rehab, I had been thinking about how to house, store and access roughly 5,000 singles.My LPs are already in storage--to my chagrin--but if I am going to keep my singles in our new residence, I have to have them stored away safely; safely for both the records and for me, because I certainly do not need a replay of what happened all those weeks ago.

I thought and thought abd thought some more about what to do, and I even put up my quagmire on a couple of social boards.

I also did some research, and found thst such receptacles did exist, but at a price that I wasn't willing--or able--to pay.

In the interim, a couple of professional woodworkers that were recommended to me were contacted, but even though they agreed to work on the project, they all since bowed out of the project by their silence.

I got frustrated, did some more thinking about this situation, and finally decided that the solution to the problem was standing a couple feet away from me in my bedroom.

In our old house, I stored my 45s in plastic storage bins that I bought over the years from Target.

These bins--I ended up having eight of them--are low to the floor--maybe three feet to three and a half feet high off the floor--and with each featuring three drawers, they are sturdy and could hold about 600 some odd singles per unit, or about 200 per drawer.

When we were forced out of our house, I got rid of all of these receptacles, some of which were falling apart from wear.

I bought these larger plastic holders to house these 45s, and I guess the rest is history.

But I did keep one of these smaller units, because not even two of these larger units could hold all my singles.

Through the pain and distress caused by one of the drawers from these larger receptacles falling on me, that smaller holder still housed about 600 records, with no pain.

I also used my old end table to my bed to store about 600 singles, so really, I have been knocking myself out trying to figure out how to store the other 3,800 records or so ... but then, it all dawned on me.

I had a real epiphany of "record" proportions.

If the singles were successfully stored and accessed for decades from those smaller storage bins in the past, why couldn't I do it again?

So late last week, I online ordered three of the smaller storage bins from Target, got them to me that evening, and then on Saturday, I began to move everything over from the larger storage dressers to the smaller three-tier bin.

I finished the first of the moving on Sunday afternoon, and I figure that I needed two more of these bins to complete the full move, and I accomplished that on an otherwise boring Sunday.

One of the larger receptacles we got rid of, and my wife wants the other one to store clothes and things, so when I finish the project, she will get what she wants.

Or perhaps we can put that ine in our storage area too.

You can downplay all of this as akin to nothing more than twiddling my thumbs, but let me tell you, thus was therapeutic to me in so many ways, both mentally and physically, and yes, emotionally too.

It made me feel good to solve the problem, it filled up weekend time that I wouldn't normally be doing too much else in, and it made me feel useful thst I was doing something to make our new residence more user friendly.

And that I was even able to do all of this with minimal help demonstrates that I am getting better each and every day.

I have often told my wife thst it would take us roughly six months to "fully move into" our new dwelling.

We still have a ways to go--there are some pieces of furniture and some other things we could use to further make our apartment what we want it to be, but we are on our way.

And my solution to this problem that we had definitely points us in the right direction--

And points me, personally, in the right direction, too.