©2003 Joseph Beachy

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Joe Beachy is a former circus radio engineer, wearer of forty three hats, theatre tech director, and a refugee from Fox. He still resides in tinsel town.

Lying still on a new carpet of an empty apartment, eyes closed, absorbing the essence of the space, I listen.  A voluminous presence, enhanced by cathedral ceilings – the doors and windows closed allowing no outer element to contend with. No buzz or hums from electrical appliances, no sound absorbing effect from a nearby couch or beanbag, no clattering utensil drawers, clinking wine glasses, clanging pots and pans filled with sizzling oils and tumbling vegetables, no computer hard drives grinding away with swirling fans and static monitors coming to life, no stereo singing, remote control clicking, phones ringing or books resting - absolutely nothing, a clean slate, a new space...to clutter.

Moving - we've all been there before – what to bring or throw out.  Storage centers have proliferated throughout California and the United States in the last decade to accommodate insatiable pack rats. The excess: a comfortable (musty) stuffed chair, exercise bike, bins of deflated footballs, basketballs and dog-chewed baseballs, rolled posters from teenage years, candles yearning to be burned, boxes of jars begging for jam, tins of hardware, tubs of vinyl records, cassettes, 8-track tapes, and reel-to-reels – endless photos, and finally, the papers – tax documents, bills and receipts from ten years ago, insurance and maintenance records, warrantees, work folders from long forgotten jobs, school papers, marriage licenses and birth certificates.  The stuff of life  

Nostalgia is the daily special and ebay serves it round the clock – trinkets from remembered pasts, collected, weighing down shelves or crammed in a drawer.  People queue up for TV shows such as "The Antique Roadshow", to find out what their "baggage" is worth. Then it's stuffed back in the attic. Shouldn't life in the 21st century be simpler, smarter and streamlined? We still create and collect too much crap.

The recent fires in Southern California were an eye-opener.  Thousands of homes lost, up in flames.  Private histories which were strung together by photos, personal recordings and papers are all ashes now – entire treasures gone forever. Many of the victims reported leaving so quickly that all they could grab were a few photos.  

With the storage advances of memory cards we will soon be able to carry with us all of our personal documents (photos, letters, and multimedia) in our pockets or on a key ring and begin to clean up and back up our "analog" lives, and place them in the digital world.

A good friend of mine who was overwhelmed with boxes of school papers – years of college assignments, some worth revisiting from time to time, was on the verge of tossing them all into the dumpster to free up space.  First he thought of scanning the items – too time consuming, he decided instead to snap pictures with his digital camera.  He set a bright light up on a table and one page at a time, snapped away, transferring the files from the camera's memory card to his hard drive when full - it went surprisingly fast and the results were fine.  He simply grouped many pages into categories, shot them, named the folders accordingly and continued. The most rewarding moment he said, "when I tossed all those boxes of paper into the dumpster in exchange for two CD's – I was finally free of them". 

Our homes are chock full of specialty gadgets. As-seen-on-TV is now, as-seen-on-our-floors. Entertainment systems are sprawling across half of our living rooms. We trip over game station cables and sit on multiple remote controls – it's ridiculous.  Time to consolidate with well constructed products, which can be updated and not become obsolete in a few years – generic modular systems that perform many tasks – home alarm systems that not only monitor your doors and windows alerting authorities when an intruder breaks in, but can act as an energy control panel, turning off and appliances when you leave, it could answer your phone, give you stock quotes and other information, and learn other capabilities. These kinds of products could reduce the volume of junk in our homes.

One new and wonderful trend in multimedia is wireless media centers (such as gateway). These wi-fi enabled computers or separate add-on components, allow audio, video and internet media files to play through an entertainment system. The ultimate virtual jukebox is a reality – no vinyl, tapes or disc's taking up shelf space, whatever you want to listen to or see, organized any way you like, all controlled by remote control, or your keyboard. The physical future of media is evaporating. It will be hard for some to accept this, our need to touch and feel what we buy – something tangible.  Does it really matter if it's a file on a memory stick we're hearing rather than a diamond stylus spinning around vinyl, polyester tape pulled across metal heads, or a red laser analyzing pits on a plastic disc?  The younger generation should have an easier time relating to this, growing up listening to MP3's, but in time CD's will seem as outdated as LP's. 

A captured moment may be priceless, but over time these mementos become heaping piles. Create virtual photo albums that are available on the net for family and friends to see. These photos can't be lost in a fire. Move towards a paperless home, scanning documents, keeping only essential papers. Archive personal recordings of importance onto CD, DVD, or other removable media – make two copies and keep them in different locations.  It takes some time and energy but the benefits of less clutter and preserving the quality of those recordings, which become digital and long lasting, is worth it. 

The best part of moving is the "throw out" party. It is time to give away, shred, tear, and smash those old space stealers. I still have pictures to snap of my important papers. I may have to cart some of them to the new pad. There are shelves to be built, some walls needing color, electronics to set up, and bins of things that require new resting places. The character of each room is in limbo until the possessions arrive.

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