having everything while owning nothing

I've always been a media collector. Since I was a teen, I would spend a considerable amount of my income on cassettes, records and CDs. Between my car insurance, gas, and my music obsession, my paycheck was already spent each week. In fact, there was a time when I couldn't set foot in a record store without spending some cash.

As I grew older, my taste expanded to include movies and books. By the time I was thirty, I had enough items in my media collections to fill a small bedroom. For someone who likes to read, watch movies and listen to music, this seemed like a fair trade-off. Space for entertainment. But over the years, I've also relocated many times, and each time that collection of media has to be packed up and moved. And if our new home happens to be a bit smaller than the last, we have to find storage for that which will not fit, or pare down our collection.

I eventually managed to break my habit of spending too much on CDs and DVDs, with a little help from my wife and kids. Now I get my new media fix from the internet or the library. The library, in particular, has a wonderful collection of movies, and they consistently stock their catalog with the latest releases. The downsides? Not always getting the DVD that you want when you want it, and occasionally getting a DVD that won't play. Library patrons don't seem to understand the concept of holding a disc by its edges. But it certainly has saved us lots of cash (and space).

of kids and clutter

We've been having a real problem trying to get our kids to clean up their mess every day. It seems that by the end of each day, there are hundreds of toys scattered throughout our lower level and my wife and I end up picking most of them up. I told my wife that I'm sick of picking up the kids toys for them. As far as I'm concerned, we should just take the toys away if the kids refuse to cooperate. Otherwise, we're just propagating their habit of making a mess and not picking up after themselves.

Realistically, trying to keep the house clean is almost a full time job. Both my wife and I work, so that makes it difficult to determine who gets that job, or where to squeeze the time in to get it done. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty yelling at the kids to pick up their toys when I've got tons of stuff of my own cluttering up the garage.

I've got a number of storage shelves in the garage, but they are all full and I'm just glad that we only have one car right now, as a second car wouldn't fit with everything that we have lying on the floor in there. So what happens when you run out of space for new shelving?

There are a few companies out there specializing in garage storage that offer overhead storage solutions. This is an interesting concept, although the idea of hanging a bunch of stuff over our car worries me a little, especially knowing how our home was built. Knowing my luck, finding studs would probably be impossible, or I would find out that they did something weird when constructing the frame of our garage. Or, like the wall in my bathroom, I would discover that they somehow rigged it without studs!