<p>My VCR is from the early 1980s and I still have my payroll stubs and tax returns from the mid-1970s. I’ve been working on clearing out a lot of old stuff this year. Having a good camera and an electronic storage system has given me the impetus to clean out a lot of things that we’ve accumulated over the years. I have this one storage spot with a bunch of audio-cassettes that I haven’t opened in many years - I’m tempted to toss them all out unless they’re are kid-related. Then I’d convert them to MP3s.</p>
<p>Gotta ask…why do you want a picture of the baby gates?</p>
<p>In case our kids want to show their kids some of the artifacts from the time period and to show them a bit of the things that they grew up with. I’d take a picture of a rotary phone if we had one. I’ve gone around my mother’s house with them showing them things that I grew up with.</p>
<p>Don’t people still use baby gates?</p>
<p>Ours has been sitting behind a piece of furniture for two decades. Every year we clean the house and every year I’ve put it back after cleaning the room that it’s in. This year it gets tossed.</p>
<p>Unless your furniture is made of real, solid wood, or you are still using it, it isn’t worth hanging on to. Most of the furniture built in the last few decades have wood fronts, but particle board backs and insides, and aren’t ever going to be worth anything.</p>
<p>The armoire we had for twenty years was intended (in my mind, at the time I bought it) to last forever. Who would have anticipated huge flat screen TVs back in 1992? It could have been repurposed into a desk, but our house doesn’t have the room for that. I had a hard time parting with it, but we had no space for it, and once it was gone I really didn’t care about it.</p>
<p>Of course, it wasn’t an antique armoire, just a piece of furniture from 1990 that looked old. My real antiques are a different story altogether. A real antique armoire is worth keeping and loving… If you have the space for it.</p>
<p>The landfills are full of big, fake TV armoires, functioning but non-stainess steel appliances, working but outdated electronics and old mattresses. Someday the archeologists will wonder what happened.</p>
<p>Reminds me of the “Now is the best day” exhibits that I saw when I was a kid at the Museum of Science.</p>
<p>I have the original phone from my parents’ home. It has a three-prong plug. I think it had been sitting on their bedside table since 1949.</p>
<p>^Haha! Do you think in 50 years our grandchildren will fondly reminisce about their grandparents’ armoires…“I found granny’s ‘entertainment center’ in her basement…it has PARTICLE BOARD in the back, I saw one like it in a museum!”</p>
<p>We’ll, we’re out of date, and intend to stay that way until our 20 year old Sony dies. It’s hidden by the lovely shaker armoire in our family room which I am in no hurry to get rid of. I’ve never liked the looks of a TV as a focal point in a family or living room, much less an enormous one, so I’d rather keep ours behind the cabinet doors. We only watch it occasionally, anyway, for rented movies or special events.
For me, it’s not a matter of parting with things, as I have a fairly minimalist attitude in decor and love a clean look. It’s more, why fix what isn’t broken? Why spend a couple of grand on a large screen TV when the one you’ve had for years works well, and the cabinet housing it still looks good and fits in with the style of our room? </p>
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<p>If the youngsters who come to our house think we’re old fogey’s because we haven’t upgraded to a large, flat screen and re-homed our armoire, well, they’re right. 
My 28 year-old has already “claimed” it, though, if we ever want to dump it, so it can’t be that bad.</p>
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<p>Our CRT TV is 21 inches. We’d probably replace it with something similarly-sized. We don’t watch a lot of TV, maybe three hours a week for the whole family (I don’t watch TV outside of a few tennis matches a year that aren’t available on the internet). There are power savings too but that’s not a real excuse because we wouldn’t use it that much. I also have spare 20 inch monitors that I could just hook up a TV tuner to if they have such things and if they are cheap.</p>
<p>ECC…that three prong plug is a “newer” phone. The old ones were wired directly into the walls…no plugs.</p>
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<p>Because the technology is light years ahead of the old CRT TVs. IMHO, there is just no comparison. Once you’ve watched a flat screen TV for a few nights, you’ll never go back.</p>
<p>I loved some of the ideas of repurposing on Pinterest. I admire that kind of creativity. Use what you have to make what you need. </p>
<p>We no longer have an armoire as our oldest took it with him when he moved out. It houses his TV as he as an ‘old’ big TV (he has not yet prioritized a flat screen TV into the budget).</p>
<p>Those armoires are hugely popular in the St. Pete area. They are refinished in chalk paint, distressed and sold as “cottage chic”. They are selling for upwards of $400. There are so many condos and small homes in this area and families visiting from “up north” that people love them for extra storage.</p>
<p>Once we replaced the massive tv in the den and purchased a flat panel, we took the doors off of the armoire and got a tv that would fit the opening. We also thought about cutting it down and using just the bottom half, but the top is so pretty I didn’t want to harm it. The door actually were made to slide into the cabinet as it was custom made as a tv cabinet, but we liked the look better with the doors off, plus it allowed us to buy one size up in the tv.</p>
<p>If the kids or someone wants the piece when we are old and feeble, the doors just screw right back on!!</p>
<p>We have a lovely Craftsman solid wood cabinet and it is still in the family room, though filled with photo albums and such. Loved the Pinterest pics – wish my craft room was big enough to put the thing in there, but it gives me some ideas!</p>
<p>we donated ours to Habitat for Humanity - Restore resal outlet . Theytake all kinds of things and resell them . When we re did our kitchen they came and took the old kitchen cabinets, counter tops and even the kitchen sink!</p>
<p>If you get rid of the baby gate, you’ll need it in a few years when grandchildren come…</p>
<p>We turned ours into a bookcase, which works out well since I own piles more books than I used to, having joined two separate book groups as part of my effort to fill in the ‘empty’ spaces after DD left for college.</p>