Was that virtue or vice?

I need to clean up.
I need to organize.
I need to cull.
I need to divest.

In anticipation of changes to come, this applies to my house and its environs, and to the loft and its environs.

My biggest problem at home is books and music.
Who needs all that?

Well, perhaps I do.

But it is important to examine what would have been nigh unto impossible to even find much less acquire 7 years ago, even, in some cases two years ago, (and so, I reasoned, I was justified in keeping, no, hoarding, in dusty and precarious stacks on every horizontal surface in every room of every building to which I had an access, no matter in what state of decrepitude) but is now readily available at a moment's notice anywhere on the globe, (heaven be praised for the internet....)

And to examine what can be stored on a tiny disc instead of in looseleaf notebooks needing a foot and a half of shelf space.

But it's still hard to throw things out.

I read an essay a while ago, I believe in the NY Times, in which the writer observed a young woman trying to sell unwanted paperbacks to a used book seller. After making her deal, she took those rejected by the store and unceremoniously dumped them into the nearest trashcan.

The writer admired her, but admitted he could not do likewise.

It does go against the grain.

So today, I set my face and.... oh, I can hardly admit it.... and threw away some music.
Here's the hinky part -- some of it was falling apart, barely usable at all.

But some of it.... well, it's just crappy music. Or insipid arrangements. Or simply completely inappropriate for the milieu in which it was found.
As Himself says, you can't have everything and if ya could, where'd ya put it?
And only so many filing cabinets can fit in the choir room.
So should space really be devoted to Kum-by-yah?

I had already moved it from the most easily accessible drawers where it was crammed, cheek-by-jowl with dreadfulnesses from every other era.

For my entire tenure, I have been trying to thin the herd, the task complicated by the fact that one of my predecessors had toner in his veins and seems to have been going for some kind of Guiness record for photo-cpoies, (one retiring long-time choir member, for instance, turned in his folderS for me to sort through and return to the correct drawers.... 12, count'em TWELVE copies of the same edition of the Franck Panis Angelicus. Five of them orignal, 7 illegal copies.)

Anyway, yes, I threw some items away that it is conceivable someone might still have wanted to use. But I don't think they should be in the files of the choir of a Catholic liturgical choir to even suggest themselves to any less-than-informed musician that come along in the future..

Tell me I was right? please?