Staci and I have been away from RVA visiting the families this past week. By visiting, I primarily mean sitting on their couches doing next to nothing, but that was the entire point really. We weren’t really keen on doing anything in particular.

Last night I went to my parent’s house for the first time in a little over a year and I came face to face with the sheer volume of accumulated stuff I have left there. We moved to this house when I was in college and my brother graduated from high school. You wouldn’t know it from the sorts of things we’ve saved. Piled in heaps and buckets and scattered across the basement floor are all number of toys spanning nearly my entire life. Things we probably should have gotten rid of, but never managed to do so.

It starts with a few beloved franchises. A box of Transformers, for instance, or old Star Wars figures. There’s no way we can just throw those out. Those are collector’s items, and positively soaking in sentimental value. But, since we’re keeping Han Solo we might as well hang on to Funshine Bear over here. I mean, there’s plenty of room here. And things pile, and pile, and pile. My parents are equally guilty of this, having their own piles of things, but it being their house they have the right.

The action figures, though, are only the least anguishing tip of the iceberg. While I certainly love many of them, they cannot compete with the towering edifice of my LEGO collection.

I have loved the LEGO brick since I was a wee lad. I still remember my first set (6364 Paramedic Unit) and that I never built it. The same Christmas I also acquired a red plastic LEGO brand carrying case and promptly dumped the set into the tub and never looked back. In time, I would end up building the model for which instructions had been provided at least once before enjoining the new parts with my ever-burgeoning collection.

It was the Star Wars sets that broke me the hardest though. I hadn’t so much as walked past the LEGO aisle in a store until an ex-girlfriend brought home the X-Wing set to which we soon added the Y-Wing and A-Wing sets. That’s when the obsession took hold and I would find myself shuffling around department stores looking for sales or making trips to outlet malls to look for deals (I’ve barely forgiven myself for letting the TECHNIC Space Shuttle slip out of my fingers).

But now we have a smaller house, we’re still thinking about moving, and I’m eager to get myself onto a budget that works so we might stop living so close to our paychecks. The question arises: What do I do with all of this that I have acquired? Can I bear to sell such a beloved collection? Might that actually give me peace of mind to let go? Neither the letting go, nor the movement of storage of my heap give me any comfort as I think about them now.