Time to clear the clutter

After decades of lugging from state to state a full-sized stereo console with an AM/FM radio and -- believe it or not -- an old-fashioned 8-track player, it is gone.

My wife and I bought the record player stereo console back in the mid 1970s and first had it in a townhouse apartment in Columbus, Ohio, before we bought a house on the west side of Columbus. We enjoyed listening to the radio, playing the 8 tracks and those old-fashioned things called 331/3 rpm records of artists who were young then and now long gone.

I even had old headphones that I would plug into the console and run the line out of a back porch hammock to enjoy the music and watch our then baby daughter.

From Columbus the console went to Piqua, Ohio; two houses in Steubenville, Ohio; East Liverpool, Ohio; and to the Deep South in New Iberia, La., before making the trip back north to Parkersburg. The console (and our 15-year-old cat) are more traveled than some people I know.

My wife had tried to sell the console for next to nothing at her last two garage sales and finally said "enough is enough, let's get rid of it."

Surprised anyone would want it, my wife called The Salvation Army, which said they'd pick it up ... and they did at the exact time they said they would be at our home.

Now, is it time to recycle our 32-year-old, married daughter's toy box and miniature stove and refrigerator?