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Be Uncluttered is the perfect podcast for those that wish to organise their lives. The hosts are Rebecca Mezzino and Tara Tuttle who each bring a different level of expertise and in this chat with the hosts, we cover music in their lives as well how to organise a music collection with the aim of keeping memories alive.

Hear here John Murch in conversation with Bec in our South Australian studio and Tara on the line from the States…

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IMAGE CREDIT: Cocoon Studios

This chat was recorded with the intention of being heard on both podcasts, you can hear their version HERE.

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The Australian Music Prize – Short List:

  • Amyl and The Sniffers (Comfort To Me)
  • Baker Boy (Gela)
  • Emma Donovan & The Putbacks (Under These Streets)
  • Genesis Owusu (Smiling With No Teeth)
  • Hiatus Kaiyote (Mood Valiant)
  • King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard (Butterfly 3000)
  • Martha Marlow (Medicine Man)
  • Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (Carnage) 
  • Odette (Herald)

Sam Buckingham’s Dear John (Album):

In The Box: Alan Fletcher

Feature Guests: Bec and Tara of Be Uncluttered

Music Mentions:

Next Feature Guest: The Violets share their first album in 20 years

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CREDITS

Theme/Music: Martin Kennedy and All India Radio   

Web-design/tech: Steve Davis

Voice: Tammy Weller  

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TRANSCRIPT

First version provided by REV team member Ndaba D – check to audio before quoting wider

Introduction: Rebecca Mezzino is from Declutter Coaching and the author of ‘Letting Go, How To Choose Freedom Over Clutter’… and Tara Tuttle is from Bask Life Coaching. Together Bec and Tara are the host of the Be Uncluttered podcast. Today they join us to talk music in their lives and tips to live better with our own music memories and collections.

John Murch: For you, Tara, what does it mean to have music in your life?

Tara Tuttle: Oh, curly questions straight up. For me, it’s the soundtrack that plays sometimes internally when there is no actual music playing and sometimes it fills the peace and quiet when you want it filled. For me, music is quite often either in my car, it’s in my home. It’s usually the background noise, if we have people over for dinner or if we have friends for drinks or are hanging out in the garden. It’s also a little connection point, I think, between myself and my kids, myself and my parents, and even grandparents, is something that kind of connects all people, provides an avenue to, I guess, not just talk about music but experience together. So it’s a big question and I’m not sure I’ve even really answered it. But for me, that’s kind of music shows up.

John Murch: I think, across our conversation, today, we’re going to talk a bit about that emotional connection, because particularly when… There’s 10% of my collection I’ve recently got rid of because… And I think that’s the term, I feel a little uncomfortable with getting rid of, but moved along, so that I had a clearer focus of what I actually did have. Bec, I’ve got a question for you. Grab, I think, from the fantastic series called Moving May, which is four episodes that you did about moving.

Rebecca Mezzino: From the Podcast: Recently, I asked mum about these records that I couldn’t find, my two first records I ever had. I said to mum, I can’t find them, I’m hoping you’ve got them. And then the next time I went to her place, she had them out on the bed. She’d found them. So I think those were the last things that I had left at mom’s house.

John Murch: Who were on these records?

Rebecca Mezzino: First one, which is my favourite was Starships, it’s one where the four of them all… Oh, the artwork is great, with the cartoon kind of drawings of them all across the front. And the other one was Summer ’87, so it was a compilation album. And I still have them both, I’ve brought them home with me.

John Murch: Why did you think it was important to hold onto those two records and what’s the story of when you got them?

Rebecca Mezzino: I don’t remember necessarily getting them. I fell in love with We Built This City. And I think I remember saying to my parents that I wanted the record, so I think I got it for Christmas or a birthday or something like that. It might’ve been a Christmas present. And then Summer ’87, I believe could’ve been a Christmas or a birthday present as well because my birthday’s at the start of summer. So I think it would’ve been released in the middle of the year of 1987 or something. And so again, it would’ve been a gift. I don’t think I would’ve spent own money on that. But they’re just… We Built This City and that song is still on my favourites list and I still listen to it. I cannot remember many of the other songs on the album and I haven’t really played it, but it’s still… I’m not going to be letting it go because it represents part of… Just that time in my life.

Rebecca Mezzino: And the compilation album, the special thing about that really is the fact that when, and this is where the younger generation don’t get this, but when we got tapes and records, we had to listen to them in the order that they played. We didn’t really have a chance to skip around or we couldn’t put them on shuffle or whatever. So we listened to them in the order. And so there’s something about this compilation album and the relationship between each of the songs and the transition between each of them. And so I can hear one of those songs on the radio and then be expecting the next song to come up. And so that’s sort of one of the things about that compilation album is that I do… I can’t really remember the order of them now, but if you played one and came to the end, I’d probably be able to tell you which one was going to be coming up next.

John Murch: Tara, what was your first record? And dare I ask, do you still have it in the same capacity that Bec does?

Tara Tuttle: Ooh, no. I think the first whole album I ever bought for my self, I’m ashamed to admit this in public, was Robert Palmer’s Heavy Nova, which would’ve been late like ’88, ’89. I bought it on cassette. That was the album that had simply irresistible on it. Do you remember that when that came out? Oh, tragic. And I think it was not that much longer after I’d bought that on cassette. I remember my first CD I ever bought was the soundtrack to West Side Story. Got into the musicals in the early 90s before I got into anything else. So I don’t have either of them. In fact, I don’t have any physical music anymore at all.

John Murch: Talk to us about how it feels not to own a CD, cassette or vinyl record.

Tara Tuttle: For me, it feels fabulous because it’s one less thing I am lugging around. I’ve moved with my husband’s work more times than I could account. It must be up there around 10, I think. Music was always that stuff in the box that got moved from place to place that never got opened. The first few moves we did, I think, cassettes I got rid of when I figured out I had no means of playing them anymore and then it was the CDs that I lugged around with me. And then I think at one point I tried to streamline it and I got rid of all the plastic case and put them in the binders with the special sleeves. And I kept the internal sleeves or covers and the disc.

Tara Tuttle: They were always in a box that would get put at the back of the cupboard and I wouldn’t look at it for two years and then we’d do another move and then I would pull that box out and be like, oh, yep, there’s the CD collection. And I wasn’t accessing it in the meantime, then eventually we didn’t even have the means of playing it. So it took me a while. It was a bit of a process, I let go of probably 50% the first cull and then gradually I would just keep revisiting it and to the point now where I don’t have any. So all the music I access now is just online.

John Murch: We’ll get back to Tara and her closet and CDs a little later in our chat, but to you Beck, what is the importance of having the physical copy of said music format, whatever it may be, cassette, vinyl, CD, MiniDisc?

Rebecca Mezzino: It’s a nostalgic thing for me. I think more than anything, it’s just I am a very nostalgic person. A lot of the things that I do are influenced by things from the past. So I decorate in a mid-century kind of fashion. I keep things that… Not a lot of things, but I have things from my childhood and from my adolescence that take me back to that sort of time. And I’m the type of person who almost physically gets taken back to a time when I’m holding the things. I can almost feel like I’m there. What those things do for me is they take me back to a time and it’s… There’s no trauma around and they’re all positive memories. I don’t keep anything that has negative memories. So they just take me back to a place, where I feel comfortable. And this is a thing with me being so nostalgic, I feel very comfortable with the familiar and the old. And so that’s something that I find it’s a comfort thing.

Rebecca Mezzino: I haven’t kept any cassettes. They all went when my trustee old Walkman died and got decluttered. But I do have records and I think the main reason I… There’s two reasons I’ve kept records. One is that I do like them and they give me that link to the past, but also Mick is a big fan of music-

John Murch: For those not regular to their podcast, Mick is Rebecca’s partner.

Rebecca Mezzino: … and he has kept a lot of his records. But we already had a sort of a slight collection of his and I just added to that. And I’ve actually continued to add to my record collection. In the industry that we are in, we come across old records every now and then. And so when we are at the auction house and there’s old records, or when we are dropping some off to charity or whatever, we come across these kinds of things and so I’ve picked up a few. I have picked up the Star Wars episode one on vinyl. I think it’s like the soundtrack with narrated sort of text and then characters sort of speaking in that as well, so I’ve got that. There’s little things like that that are of particular interest to me that I’ve actually also acquired. And I found a Peter and the Wolf one recently, and that has very strong memories for me of childhood. Mom and dad played that for me.

John Murch: Now, is this the Paul Hogan one?

Rebecca Mezzino: Is there a Paul Hogan one?

John Murch: I believe there’s a Paul Hogan one. You’re hearing there from Bec a lot about nostalgia. How can we actually compartmentalise that nostalgia, when we’re talking about music?

Tara Tuttle: I was not letting go of the music. I was just letting go of the physical object. It’s a bit like memories, just because you let go of the item that triggers the memory doesn’t mean you let go of the memory altogether. You might just need to find a new trigger. So for me, I still get very nostalgic about songs and I still feel that instant transport back to the time, but I don’t use the physical objects as triggers. So for me, quite often, I will put on… I might just choose a playlist that someone else has created like a Mad About the 90s or something, and there will be songs that come up in there that I forgot existed that I completely love.

Tara Tuttle: And that is almost like whole new discovery all over again. And my husband’s the same with 80s music. But then we obviously have our favourites and because we play music quite a lot about the house, I feel like I haven’t completely lost touch with the things that I really love, but yeah, occasionally some will take me by surprise or I’ll hear something on the radio. But I feel like you have to separate the two and appreciate… And this is if you are in a position where you are trying to declutter, or you want to let go of the physical music that… Just because the physical object doesn’t exist in your house, it doesn’t mean you don’t have access to that song or the album anymore. In most cases, anyway.

John Murch: I’ve decided that I’m going to have a restricted space. So this will be the space for so. So for example, behind me is my CD collection. If it doesn’t fit in those shelves, then it can’t be in my life. And then there’s the record room, which is so many kallax boxes you get at IKEA. So many of those shelves. Talk to me about how we can actually organise, so I guess it’s more of an organisation question on that road to decluttering, because obviously we’re trying to reduce at the same time when we’re touching things and moving things, what systems we could use to make that process more effective?

Rebecca Mezzino: The two keys to organising, one is the searchability of the collection and then second one is the space that it takes up. And so when your technique of choosing a boundary is one that Tara and I always talk about and recommend is, you pick a boundary and you decide that you are going to fit as much as you can in that is reasonable and helpful. And then that’s it. You can’t add to that. You have to then go into maintenance mode after that. As far as organising goes, it all depends on accessibility and how you go looking for things and how frequently you go looking for them. If you’ve decided to keep your records, but never play them, then it doesn’t really matter where they are. They don’t have to be accessible. They don’t necessarily have to be in order. You’re not going to go looking for them. You might be keeping them purely so that your kids can sell them in 50 years and get some money for them or something like that. So if that’s the case, you don’t need to worry about where they are or how to find them.

Rebecca Mezzino: However, if you play them really frequently and you’re always accessing them, and you think in certain ways, like you might think, and everyone’s different. So you might think, I feel like classical music today and so you need all your classical music together. Might say, I feel like listening to 80s, so you have your genre together or you could actually go, I feel like listening to this artist. And if you’re looking for an artist, then you might find that alphabetical, for example, might be easier for you to search. So it does really depend on how you go looking for things as to how you then organise them. And then there’s the frequency of access as well.

John Murch: Tara, you’re a fan of this artist, I do believe. Does Elton John go under E or J, 80s, 90, or 70s? Where does an Elton John record, if you were to have a physical record, where does it go?

Tara Tuttle: It would have its own display cabinet with lights, diamonds sparkling around. You shouldn’t lower its standard to put it with any other records. None could come close, so it should be on its own stand, back lit, preferably. For me, I would go alphabetical, that’s because that’s the way my brain works and I would go alphabetical by first name, probably because I would have albums, like… I guess, because I would have bands as well as artists. So, if you’re going to put The Smashing Pumpkins in there, you’re not going to put them under P for Pumpkins and put Elton under J for John. So I would go first name alphabetical. That’s how it would work for me, but that’s because that’s how my brain works. And for some people they might need to examine their behaviour and think about how they search for things to figure out what will work best for them.

John Murch: I agree with you about the first name alphabetical order is where do you put the Kylie Minogue? Because you could put it under M but then she’s now known as Kylie.

Rebecca Mezzino: Well, that’s I was thinking. I was thinking about all of the artists that only have one name as well –

John Murch: The Chers of the world.

Rebecca Mezzino: Yeah.

Tara Tuttle: Well, the other thing is, if you are more of the… If you know the title of albums, it’s like people that know the titles of books, not the authors of books, maybe you would store them in alphabetical order by title, or you could even compartmentalise. So say, my 80s collection is here and within the 80s then it’s alphabetised, rather than having all the music you’ve ever owned in alphabetical order. So you could kind of segment it down as well.

John Murch: John Peel who had over… Well, still does, it’s part of Peel Archives has 60,000 records, ordered his in chronological year order.

Rebecca Mezzino: Well, then that seems to me slightly logical in –

John Murch: With reference cards.

Rebecca Mezzino: Has to be something there that helps you then sort within that year. Because if you have 60,000, you’re going to have a few thousand in a year. And so how… Do you do them by release date then within that year? And then how do you remember the date that a record was released so that you can go and find it amongst the 3000? You know which year it was, but surely he doesn’t remember the exact release date of all of the 60,000. So you would have to have some kind of subcategorising within that.

John Murch: This is heading towards why you’re joining us today of a decluttering type process where you’re actually… You’re looking at the record, you’re putting in an order and you’re deciding whether or not to keep it or not at that stage, I’m suggesting.

Tara Tuttle: Have a think about your purpose for keeping it. First of all, if you are keeping it for nostalgia and not to readily play, then you might start looking at them in terms of a hall of fame. Do you need to keep everyone? Do you just pick your best of the best? If you are still accessing them and using them however, then maybe question you could ask yourself to help you downsize a little bit is when was the last time I played this? Because if you’ve got a serious declutter to do and you do still your music frequently, but there are a lot of albums that you don’t access anymore, then that might be a really good place to start letting go of the ones that through natural attrition have kind of dropped off your radar because you don’t access them anymore.

Rebecca Mezzino: Expanding on that as well, I would ask myself, which ones can I get digitally? Because that’s a bit of a criteria for me and we have a boundary of this particular cupboard in our buffet, in our lounge, where all of our LPs are. Once that’s full, and I think it’s pretty much… It’s almost full now. I think I might have a little bit of wiggle room for a few more, but it’s pretty much full. So if I needed to declutter that at all, or if we moved house and I had to declutter or we changed the storage somehow, I would actually target the ones that cannot be found elsewhere. So my Star Wars ones, I don’t know that I would be able to find those necessarily. And they’ve also got like little things that came in with the record, little posters and little pull-out things and all that kind of stuff that I wouldn’t be able to replicate. So those ones would be my high priority ones.

Rebecca Mezzino: Then the ones that I can find online quite easily would be a lower priority. And so I would fill my space with the high priorities first and then whatever space is left, I would then put in some of the lower priority ones. But then when the space is full, I know that my lowest priority ones can go. Like Tara said, she still has that nostalgia and that connection and several of the records that I have, I only listen to on Spotify and so they would be targeted because I’d be like, well, you know what? This Ellen Foley record, I listen to one song off and I’ll listen to it on Spotify most of the time.

Rebecca Mezzino: I like the sound of the record and it’s a memory associated with it. I have had an uncle who was a lot younger than my dad. So he was a teenager, when I was a toddler. And we would go and visit and he would blast out this Ellen Foley, We Belong to the Night, down in his bedroom and my grandma would go stomping up there and yell at him to turn it off. And I always remembered that. And whenever I hear this song, I have to turn it up really loud. And I think of him, and he died quite young. He was only in his 40s when he died. It’s one of those things where it’s a connection to him and it’s a connection to my childhood. However, I can still get that if I want on Spotify, it’s not quite the same. The record sounds a little bit different, but it’s enough that I still have the memories.

John Murch: It’s about access, isn’t it? To actually know that you can hear and also where you want to hear it. So if you’re not too fast about pulling out the LP and playing the 20 minute sides, for example, then that may suffice.

Rebecca Mezzino: Yeah. And it’s only that one song that I tend to listen to anyway from the record. I don’t tend to put records on in the house. I don’t actually know how to connect it up. Mick’s the one who has to come and press all the buttons and plug all the things in to get the record player connected because the way it is in the cupboard, it’s not really that usable. It’s a bit of an ordeal and so I kind of have this idea of, oh, I’d love to just put that record on and I have it on the background playing from start to finish every now and then, but I never think of doing it. So when you are downsizing, there’s a bit of a difference between the aspiration you have of listening to it and whether you actually do or not. And to be honest with yourself about that. That one would probably go if I put all that criteria in, if I had to.

John Murch: That’s got to do with aspirational things, isn’t it holding onto things for the aspiration of them.

Tara Tuttle: It’s hard to separate aspirational and sentimental here because some people aspire to have a collection that’s worthy of being looked at or regarded by other people. It’s like people that collect books, not because they intend to read them or maybe they have read them and they don’t intend to read them again, but because they keep them as a show piece. There’s very different motivation around that when compared with sentimentality. Until you drill down and figure out why you were holding onto things, it’s very hard to then figure out what questions to ask yourself about letting go. It’s hard too, because some people it’s just what they collect. Music is their bag, that’s their thing. And I have no qualms with people that have huge music collections, if it’s not impacting the way they live their life. If they can store them and move around them and function and find what they need when they want to play things and in the version that they want to play them, then that’s awesome.

Tara Tuttle: For me, the issue comes when people have more than they can access or they’re paying for storage for stuff that they just aren’t using. That’s when I feel like you need to get to the underlying reason why you are holding onto so much stuff.

Rebecca Mezzino: Following on for that, you reminded me of a client we had Tara, when you were talking about that. And we were helping a man downsize once and he had a two or might have only been a one bedroom apartment, and we were going through and packing the house for him so that he could move. And he was moving to a place that was even small, like a studio apartment. In his bedroom, he had wardrobes all around all three walls and when we opened up the cupboards, they were full of LPs. And then all these laundry cupboards were full of LPs, all these kitchen cupboards were full of LPs. And he was happily ensconced in this little LP jungle. And he had, one saucepan and one fry pan and one set of utensils because he had no room for anything else. And he had a small little section of clothing.

Rebecca Mezzino: And I think that he had decided what his priority was and he got rid of all of the other stuff so that he could have more LPs. Like Tara said, there’s no problem with that. If that’s what people choose to do, then that’s awesome, because he was just living his best life there with all his LPs and what made him happy. Like Tara said, when it’s a problem it’s when you can’t function the way you want to function because of them that you need to consider the downsizing then.

John Murch: Well, music is like food for the mind. So, a saucepan for the stomach and then records for the rest of it is all good. I believe Tara, you want to talk about when people… What’s this term get rid of, what are you talking about? Why would you want to do that?

Tara Tuttle: A harsh phrase, isn’t it?

John Murch: I’m just going to cover my CD collection, so I can’t hear you.

Tara Tuttle: Maybe if we say de-own instead, is that a bit gentler, John?

John Murch: Send to a better place.

Tara Tuttle: Yeah. The big CD cloud in the sky. For me, I think when I de-owned or let go of my collection, part of it for me was I really wanted to find a place that I could let go of them too that didn’t feel like a waste and not just a waste of the money that I’d spent, but also I thought there’s hours upon hours of music here, and there will be someone that will love this album and play this album and give it a life that I am not giving it because it is sitting in a box at the back of my wardrobe being shunted around the country.

Tara Tuttle: And so for me, finding a place to let go of it, which wasn’t just putting it in the rubbish bin was a really key component of me feeling okay with letting it go. I think I took a bunch of mine into a secondhand CD store and they went through and was like, yes, yes, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, yes, no, no, no, no. But it was a start. It was that whole thing of give them the next life and then that makes it a bit easier.

Rebecca Mezzino: I think for people that are selling their CDs, there’d be some that are thinking about the money, but I think most people know they’re not worth much at all. I think the main thing about selling them is even if they’re getting 25 cents, I think that they’re then sure they’re not going in the bin. Whereas if you are going to just drop them at your local charity, you kind of worry, are they just going to chuck these in the bin?

John Murch: It’s that new home thing which is key, because it was so much part of your own home. And I know we’re talking about selling at the moment, but one thing I want to say about the free aspect, where do you give them away to? And one of the great satisfactions I’ve had recently is the local street library. Those people might take them and sell them, but at least I know they sort of going to a home. There’s a chance they’re going to a good home between A and B.

Rebecca Mezzino: They have another life.

John Murch: And I was reassured of that when three of those CDs disappeared and then came back two or three weeks later for someone else to have a listen to.

Rebecca Mezzino: Oh, lovely.

John Murch: So the process of the street library was actually doing its thing.

Rebecca Mezzino: Yeah. It was getting shared amongst the community. Yeah. And that’s where I really love my local Facebook Buy Nothing Group. That one is a really good one as well in that there are some of the things that go on that group of things that charity store wouldn’t take. But people really like sharing them, they like… And it’s a little small community. In these groups, you have to be part, you have to live in the suburbs that are… The group’s designated for. And so in that case, I’ve given away a few things like that. Actually, they haven’t gone yet, but I’ve got a box of DVDs to go to that group as well. I’m just waiting for someone to send them. No one seems to want them, but that’s probably… It’s just the sign of our times. But it’s that whole… That community giving is really quite important as well and you get that idea that they’re going to be of some use and that’s a comfort.

John Murch: Can we talk about vinyl? What’s your thoughts on that?

Tara Tuttle: Vinyl and cassettes both have made a massive resurgence. Same options if you’re choosing to sell, eBay, your marketplace groups, lots of people will choose to sell them at their local flea markets and garage sales as well. I think the biggest difference here is there’s a much bigger market out there for brick and mortar record or music stores to purchase them from you and sell them. There’s a lot more people interested in vinyl and cassettes than there is in CDs.

Rebecca Mezzino: Mick was telling me that the auction houses will also… Well, we know they take vinyl, but they’ll also take cassettes as well. Got specific favourite genres though. So they prefer 70s, 80s rock and pop. So they’re not so much on the classical side or anything like that. But the auction houses definitely take vinyl, but also will even take cassettes now.

Tara Tuttle: There’s a website called valueyourmusic.com and you can look up the price of what you have, and you can also have a look at other cassettes or vinyl that has sold recently and the prices they got. And some of them were really astounding to me, because I obviously have not been in there selling my music space for a very long time, but a Britney Spears past single of I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll sold last week for £225, which I thought was insane. The Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon album cassette sold for £146 last week. So there’s probably a lot of albums, cassettes, vinyls, sitting around in people’s attics or in boxes in their garage and places like that. And I’m sure a lot do people would look at that and go, oh, that’s junk or it’s not worth the time. My time is more valuable, so I’ll just donate it.

Tara Tuttle: But I think if you just set aside even half an hour to do some research on some of the things that you’ve got, you might find that there’s a little bit of cash in there for you, which might make parting a bit sweeter. Getting back to discs, you can’t recycle them. So if you find that you don’t have a market, conventional recycling won’t take discs. So if you’ve got to the end of your tether and you think it’s time to just throw them out and you’re okay with that, you can’t pop them in your recycling bin. There are some e-waste centres that will accept compact discs, but you will need to contact your local e-waste centre to find out. It’s a bit of a specialised product.

Rebecca Mezzino: School crafts and arts can also take them.

Tara Tuttle: Also, surprisingly, maybe for some people to think of, is land care groups will quite often take them as well or if you’ve got inner city garden hubs and community gardens. Because I’ve hung a couple of CDs of mine in apricot trees when I was trying to scare away some birds and it’s probably not the life we intended our CDs to have their second life to look like but if you think about them in the same way as you think about clothing, if you own a t-shirt that you once loved but no one wants it and it won’t sell, you would rather someone buy and use it as a rag or it’d be donated and used as a rag rather than just be put in landfill. And if you can think about your CDs in the same way, if no one’s going to listen to them anymore, the next best thing is that kids use them for arts and craft and your local playgroup takes them, or your community garden takes them and uses them as birds scarers, at least it’s another purpose.

John Murch: The idea of holding onto those memories of the music. We start off talking about those memories. How do we hold onto those, if we don’t have the physical copy?

Rebecca Mezzino: For most people, the memory’s not in the object, the memory’s in the song. Back to that Ellen Foley, We Belong to the Night, I remember my uncle had the record, but my parents never had it and I don’t know where Uncle Steve’s went. Maybe one of my cousins got it or something, but I didn’t get it. And it was only through hearing it occasionally on the radio for many years that I would get this flash of memory. So it was like a little gift, from above sometimes because I hadn’t found the album, I didn’t know where it was. I hadn’t really thought a great deal about it, but whenever it came on the radio, I was like, whoa, flashback straight back there, I was this little kid. And I’ve acquired the album since, and I do enjoy looking at the cover and all that kind of stuff. But without it, I would still be able to get exactly that.

Rebecca Mezzino: So it’s the sound, when comes to music, that is the primary trigger of our memories. And I think the tactile side and the visual side is secondary. If for some reason that tactile side is much more higher up than the sound of it, then you would be wanting to keep the physical object. But for most songs that trigger a memory, it’s the sound. And if we can source that sound elsewhere, we are going to be able to have those memories.

John Murch: That brings us to ownership, because of course Spotify, and to lesser degree these days, Apple Music, you don’t actually own the songs for which you stream. It’s in that ecosystem and that’s how you access it. So can you talk to us about that and how we make sure that we don’t actually fall down that trap of actually thinking we own music?

Tara Tuttle: Well, I guess if you currently owning it and thinking about letting it go, make yourself a little checklist before you let it go, check and see if it is available on the platform that you were choosing to access your music through. Because there are albums… I have had a very hard time over here in the US with some of the streaming sites, American preferred playlists and that kind of thing, trying to access some of the songs that I love from my teenage years, like an Australian Indie bands and that kind of stuff. They just don’t show up here and I find that a little bit heartbreaking at times. So I think before you let go of things, check that you can find them elsewhere. You can find them… You will not own it, but if it is accessible elsewhere, that’s pretty much the next best thing. I would say most things that are accessible now online will continue to be accessible, but it should be one of the checkpoints that you have before you let go of something is making sure you have access to it somewhere else.

Tara Tuttle: And it might even be that you find that online and then you add it to your own playlist or you add the songs from the album that you loved to a playlist before you let go of the album, so that you… If you’ve created your own playlist, you know where to find it easily.

John Murch: I guess one of the things I’m finding now at this particular point is trying to get hold of a legacy of music that’s relevant to me and passing that on and you can give your password to possibly a music collection, but it’s just not the same it feels in some regards. So I’m wondering how we can encapsulate that aspect of a music collection.

Rebecca Mezzino: When we’re thinking about… Because this comes up a lot with all different categories of belongings. And I think when we think about our legacy, one of the things that we often forget, and I was having this conversation with a client just a couple of weeks ago, and we were chatting about why he was collecting the things he was collecting. And he was collecting a broad sort of range of things, but mostly books. I said, well, why are you collecting them? And he said, because I want to give back to the world. I want to learn this information then I want to give back to. I want to pass on this legacy. And I said, is there somebody there waiting to receive that baton? And I said, do your kids actually… Are they interested in the topics that you’re interested in? Are they interested… And he sort of looked at me and he said, no.

Rebecca Mezzino: And I said, so who are you holding onto this for? Why are you collecting? I said, I think the reason you’re collecting is to give yourself joy now. And I said, there’s nothing wrong with that, but we have to be honest with ourselves. Does anybody actually want this stuff from us when we’re gone? The stuff that we think is important and stuff, because there’s no way that that song, that Ellen Foley song, means the same to anybody else than me, there’s none. My sister was too young to have the same memories. My cousins probably had more access to him, so they probably have a broader range of music that they associate with him. Me passing that record onto somebody else is completely meaningless to. My kids, they have no idea what I’m talking about.

Rebecca Mezzino: And so, when we are thinking about this legacy, what is it that we want to pass on? Do we want to pass on a picture of ourselves? And if so, can we make that picture up out of something different? If we need to declutter, but also we have this idea that we want to leave some kind of legacy or leave a picture of who we were, maybe we can leave that picture in photographs of our favourite albums or a playlist on Spotify, that’s printed out, that they can then make themselves when they go searching for those songs. That’s the kind of thing that we sort of have to think about, does anyone actually want to receive this legacy?

Tara Tuttle: This was one thing I struggled with. I pared-down my collection bit by bit by bit. I had a hall of fame of about 20 discs and I was like, I don’t know that I can let these go because one day, the legacy idea, how will my kids know that what the soundtrack to my teens was if there’s no proof. And so what I did, and it was for me as much as it was for them, I took the inside sleeves for the albums that I had left and I stuck them, I glued them into my yearbooks that I kept from high school. So into the front and back cover. So it’s like if my kids or my grandkids or anyone one day stumbles upon the five year books that make up the five years that I was in high school, there is two or three album covers stuck in each of my yearbook, which will kind of show what the soundtrack to my year was that year.

Tara Tuttle: And it was a little way of kind of preserving the memory without adding extra. I couldn’t even tell you right now, which ones are in what books and where the books themselves are, but I know they exist. And again, it just helped me let go of it because I felt like it wasn’t lost and I wouldn’t forget and it’s there. But I think there are far more streamlined ways of keeping things without keeping all of it.

Rebecca Mezzino: Sometimes we just have to also think, does it matter who knows? I’m a big fan of preserving history in general, but I sort of think about, like when I was getting rid of my CDs, I was just thinking my kids probably don’t really care what I was into and they hear my favourites, when I force them to listen to Spotify in the car. They kind of have that exposure to it. To me, it doesn’t matter if that’s lost, which I know is probably an outlying opinion or thought.

John Murch: How we can actually change how we collect those particular musical memories, for example.

Tara Tuttle: Ways that we can keep some of the cool things about our music without keeping all the music using vertical space and displaying album artwork, because quite often the album artwork will trigger us either towards the music and putting the music on or will bring back the memories of that time in that era as well. So you could display the album covers either in a collage form. You could print miniatures of them and put them in a picture wall or like a gallery wall. There’s a million ways to store photographs these days. And so you could do the exact same thing with album covers. You could do it with ticket stubs from concerts that you’ve been to. There are ways to preserve the memory. You could put them under glass on a coffee table. It doesn’t have to be the album sitting on a shelf in a cupboard in your house. You can keep some of that music nostalgia without keeping the bulk.

John Murch: And what’s the thought about having a dedicated music corner or, and or room?

Rebecca Mezzino: If you’ve got the space, it’s a great idea. I’ve got clients that have got dedicated music spaces. One of my clients is a musician and he both has his records there as well as his instruments. And he sits there and sometimes he’s playing other times he’s doing Sudoku and listening to one of his records, but it’s this space that he has that he can do those things in it, if he wishes. And I think if you do have the space to dedicate, could even just choose a little corner. Our lounge room is one of our music spaces and then Mick uses the outside areas. Well, he’s set up an actual record player out in the studio and connected that up as well, so we’ve got two record players, one inside and one in the studio. And sometimes he casts digitally to the speakers, other times he puts something physical on. I think choosing just one little space is helpful as well.

John Murch: Alternative ways of display as well. We mentioned concert tickets, for example. And I must admit, I have in my time where I’ve had a signed concert ticket actually sold the records because that was the one thing that could remind me about the band. And I didn’t necessarily listen to the music as much as maybe someone who should own a sign ticket stub, but it was about the personality of the artist and the performance of them live more than it was the recorded works.

Tara Tuttle: No one can tell you the one way to keep your memories. You are the one that has the memories and you are the one that when you take the time to look into it can figure out how they’re triggered and why they’re triggered and then you keep what’s best for you. I think when you stop thinking in music terms as if music is its own category, if you compare it to other things, with a wardrobe, some people can really pare-down and live with 30 items and are really happy like that, other people need the choice and need to see all the things to be able to make a decision. Some people that’s too overwhelming. People keep thousands of books. Some people, again, that’s too overwhelming. Some people dedicate a space to them and no one thinks anything of having a dedicated library space.

Tara Tuttle: And I guess if you take the time to work out how critical music is to you in your life, how you want to access it, how frequently you want to access it and what works for you, how your memories are going to be triggered. And I think for me personally, letting go of all the physical stuff, it’s like the albums, the songs, the artists that I cared about most have stuck with me and the peripheral have dropped away. And occasionally I am reminded of them if I hear them on the radio and I think, oh yes, oh, I remember that. I love that. But for me, keeping that core few in my memory that are regularly played, is enough. But for others that won’t be. So I think part of it is creating your own measuring stick to work out what works best for you.

John Murch: Favourite live performance?

Rebecca Mezzino: Oh, Billy Joel. When I was a teenager, I went through a Billy Joel phase. So when he released Storm Front, I discovered Billy Joel. I was too young to have been part of his 70s sort of period, so I came in the 80s, early 90s. When he put out Storm Front and I bought that and I fell in love with it, I then proceeded to go and collect his entire back catalogue. And when he toured, my parents couldn’t afford to take me down to Melbourne. I lived in the country, so it was going to be a whole weekend trip travelling down to Melbourne to go and see him and my parents couldn’t afford it. And I still remember mom telling me how upset she was that I’d cried over her not being able to take me and she felt really bad for it.

Rebecca Mezzino: And I accepted it, it was okay. So I never got to go and then a cousin or a family friend bought me a band t-shirt while she was there and all that stuff. So that was an emotional sort of moment there, which I got over, no trauma, nothing. But then when he came to Adelaide, I was like, I am going to see Billy Joel, I have my own money now, I can afford it. I’m going, I’m dragging my poor husband along. And I sat there and I bowled through Piano Man. It was just on e of those moments for me that was just, oh, amazing. So that was… I think I’ve been to a few concerts, but that one was the best. And he was a lot older then, that was, I don’t know, 10 years ago. I had kids.

John Murch: Bec our guest, today has also hung and breathed the same air as Prince.

Rebecca Mezzino: I have. I stood right near him. I could see his hairy legs. He had shorts on, army shorts and Doc boots and a baret, of course he was wearing a baret.

Tara Tuttle: Where were you?

Rebecca Mezzino: When I was in year 11, we went down to Melbourne. My parents took all, me, my sister and our exchange student down to see Prince in Melbourne. And we are at a native, like a fauna park. And it’s quite famous, I just can’t recall the name of it at the top of my head now, but it was a wildlife park, a native wildlife park. And we sort of had been there for a little while when we started to hear there was sort of activity going on, we couldn’t work out what it was and my parents were like, yeah, whatever. And then we heard some kid… Some kid ran past us going, Prince is here, Prince is here and we were like, oh yeah, as if, and we just didn’t believe him.

Rebecca Mezzino: And then we were going through one of particular exhibit and as we were on the way out, we could see people going in and there was this collection of people going through and my mom, because it was quite a distance away. It would’ve been about 80 metres away. So my mum has sort of said, oh, look at that ridiculous little boy in the silly hat and it was Prince and his entourage and his backup singer was there and I had a conversation with his backup singer. I knew her very well because obviously we were fans and so I had a bit of a chat to her when we were standing at one of the wombat exhibits and I turned around and looked past her when I was talking to her and he was standing right behind me and I was too scared to say anything.

John Murch: That’s Bec’s two degrees of separation to Prince. How about you Tara, your favourite live concert?

Tara Tuttle: Oh, it’s tough. So I saw Elton almost two years ago. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road tour. That was highly emotional because it had been on my bucket list forever and I didn’t know if I would ever get to see him, so I pretty much cried like a baby through the entire thing. I was so overwhelmed. My beautiful friend Peta, who was with me. She’s like, are you okay? I’m like, yeah, no, I’m loving this. Its like I ugly cried through the concert, like sing and cry at the same time. It was a sight to behold that’s for sure.

Tara Tuttle: But I’m going to come like way out of left field here. For sheer stage spectacular lighting, dancing, like performance aspect, in the early 90s, I saw Janet Jackson do a Rhythm Nation tour and it blew my mind. And I don’t know if it was because I was such a massive Janet Jackson fan back in the day, but it was just… My eyes have never bulged like that. The amount of dances, the amount of polytechnics on stage, just the scenery, the lighting. It was just phenomenal. I don’t know how you can put Elton and Janet in the same sentence, but I just did.

John Murch: You speak of triggers? What for you, is that trigger that you have in your life for that concert?

Tara Tuttle: I had nothing physical, but quite often my husband and I on… Could be any night of the week, but quite often on a Friday night when the kids are buzzing around and we’re having a glass of wine while I’m making dinner, we always put tunes on and we have this kind of game we play, one of us… He might put a song on that starts with the letter A and then I’ll put a song on that starts with the letter B and we work our way through the alphabet. And so we’ll just grab a song. So it’s the most random soundtrack you can imagine because he’ll put on Daryl Braithwaite for B and then I’ll put on Cat Stevens for C, and you could never write a playlist as random as what comes up. Play this game with friends as well. And the point is you put your song on and see if the other person can figure out the song and the artist before the song finishes. And so you get some really obscure things as well.

Tara Tuttle: So quite often when I get to J, I’m like it’s got to be a Jackson of some sort or Jebediah, which is hard to find over here. That’s one of those bands that I can’t find very much of in the US. Quite often for me, those kind of little games, just like the trigger is the letter J and I think, oh Janet, which Janet song shall I play? And it just brings it back. So it’s nothing physical that I own. I don’t have a ticket stub. I don’t have the outfit that I wore. I don’t even have the CDs anymore, but I remember it.

John Murch: I’m hearing some good memories of Australia, like Adelaide Unibar gigs there for some reason.

Tara Tuttle: Yeah. Yep. Absolutely.

John Murch: In the cloisters, we call them here in South Australia.

Tara Tuttle: I think the best band I ever saw in the cloisters was Regurgitator. Oh, that was a good concept, back in the day.

John Murch: What are some of the elements that we should keep in mind if we want to embark on that process of actually decluttering the music collection so that we can enjoy what we have better.

Rebecca Mezzino: I Think Tara sort of said it early on is, first of all, figure out what’s important to you and why you are doing what you’re doing. Why are you decluttering and identify that because that helps you when it gets a bit hard. So if you’re decluttering so that you can set up a guest room so that your friends can come and visit, as you’re finding it hard to get rid of the music, go, oh, well that’s okay because if I do this, then I’m going to be able to get that reward. So think about the reasons why you’re doing it. If you can’t think of a good reason, then you might not even need to declutter. So it might just be something that you think you should do because you think you have more records than normal people. Unless you’ve got some kind of reason and you’ll have a reason, even if the reason is somebody else’s like you’ve taken over somebody else’s living space, so the people that are living with you can’t do what they need to do because your collection has overrun the entire house.

Rebecca Mezzino: It still might not be a reason that you have chosen, but it’s a reason nonetheless. A reason is harmony and fairness in the household. And so there will be a reason. So come up with your reason, figure out what is important to you now. The person that you are now, what is important? Is the tactile important? Is the visual important? Is the sound important? And that will help you then make some decisions and then set a boundary like you’ve done that boundary is really helpful because it helps you prioritise. And what you can do there is once you’ve set the boundary as you’re going through your collection, you are choosing to keep things and put them in that boundary.

Rebecca Mezzino: Once that boundary is full and if you are reluctant to let go, you’re going to fill that up really quickly and still have loads that you haven’t been through yet. And that’s okay. It just means that you’re going to have to then start prioritising a one in one out. So once your bookcase, for example, is full of LPs and you still have three stacks next to you. Then as you go through that stack, you have to look at that album and go, I want to keep this and then you have to find one that you find less important to swap it with. And then you just keep doing that until you’ve got no left to sort and your bookcase is at capacity.

John Murch: Tara, your background is in the area of psychology. Can you talk to us about the psychological benefits of going through a part of decluttering if you decide that’s what you wish to do?

Tara Tuttle: I think decluttering generally, if you feel you need it either for your mental wellness or for your having extra space in the house, I think the process of decluttering is really, really healthy for you, assessing what you have and figuring what’s important because not everything in our houses and in our spaces has the same value and has the same level of importance to us. And I think through the process of decluttering what you have, you make room for what is really important and then you are intentional about what you keep and hopefully you give those things the space they deserve and the attention they deserve.

Tara Tuttle: So if you have a huge collection of music that never gets played, because it’s too overwhelming to figure out what to play and you pare that back and you keep only your favourites, but because you know where they are and you can access them, you can use and locate and play what you love, then that’s a far better use of your time and your space than keeping lots of stuff that’s not useful or not accessed anymore. So I think it’s healthy mentally. I think it’s healthy physically. And the process, once you start, it can be a bit addictive, decluttering. And I think part of that is because it gives you mental space and clarity, which these days we just don’t have enough of.

Rebecca Mezzino: I think one of the things that can give you some psychological benefits is increasing the control you have over your belongings and that sense of control and intentionality can really give you some peace. And I always say to clients all the time, it’s not about how a space looks that dictates how it makes you feel it’s whether or not you’re in control of it or not. So you can walk into a house and like I walk into my house and there’s stuff on my kitchen bench all the time, but it doesn’t cause me any anxiety because I actually can look at each of those individual items and go, I know what I need to with those in order to then remove this visual clutter. And I think the same can go with your music collection is that if you are out of control, then decluttering might be able to bring you within control and then that has a huge psychological benefit of just being the master of your environment there.

John Murch: I want to raise, and this is can of worms that we won’t have any time to really dive fully into right now. But I just want to put on the table something I’ve been putting off for a number of years. It’s going to be coming up to five years, I haven’t been doing live radio, so I don’t really need these anymore, but 36,000 MP3s, what would be some of those hot tips like you would, with your word documents, I would think, in controlling and organising the MP3 selection?

Rebecca Mezzino: Digital organising it’s the same principle as organising physical things. The great thing is that they’re smaller. They don’t take up as much space. When you sort of say that you’ve got that many MP3s my first thought is, oh yeah, so what’s the problem. There’s no problem with that because it’s just a disc driver or external disc drive that slots onto shelf next to your records and takes up no space at all. So there’s that part of it.

Rebecca Mezzino: But also though it could be problematic if you’ve got a high volume, if searching for them is a problem. Organising them digitally, you can probably use software. I know there’s special software for organising photos that tags them in multiple categories and things like that. If there is the option through the regular software that you just get your computer or special software of tagging those so they come up in specific searches, that would be really helpful. Using folders to sort things into, can be a little bit time consuming and can also be restrictive because you have pieces of music that fit into maybe through or four different categories. And so using some kind of searchable tag would be my recommended way of doing it.

John Murch: That’s the thing I’m finding, Tara, is actually deciding then what to keep of that.

Tara Tuttle: What are you keeping it for? What’s the purpose of keeping it?

John Murch: So the same reasons, some of the CDs I collect because you are not going to find them anywhere else. These are demos that artists have sent to me before they ever made it onto albums. Be nice to have that archive, that access, but yet again, it gets back to Beck’s point, doesn’t it, Tara, of why are you keeping it for the next generation, if they won’t have access to it.

Rebecca Mezzino: Keeping it so that you can have access to it doesn’t actually answer the question. Why do you want access to it? That’s like the next logical step is what are you going to actually use those for? Are you going to use them when you’re doing a show? Are you going to use them in an interview with that artist later on? Or are you never going to use them, it’s just something that’s unique and therefore hard to let go of?

John Murch: And that’s so scary.

Rebecca Mezzino: Yeah… and the more unique things are the harder they are to let go of. But at the same time as well, it’s okay to keep things. So you have to also be easy on yourself and say, okay, I do want to have more control, but I don’t have to give myself the pressure of getting rid of everything. At least not all at once. If you’re trying to declutter certain categories, rather than saying, I have to declutter everything, you can just say what, I’m going to park those MP3s, and they’re going to be a project for when I’ve got my physical space, mental capacity to then make some decisions. And once I’ve been through a couple of other little projects, I might feel more capable of doing that as well.

Tara Tuttle: Going back to your collection if they existed, but didn’t exist in your space, would you be okay with that? Is part of your attachment to those MP3s, the fact that you have them, or is your concern that if you let them go, that they will no longer exist anywhere?

John Murch: I think it is a little bit of the latter because some of them, I always feel like, it sounds very toffee, I know, but in a national library archive or something. Because without knowing what I’m talking about, that does sound really pretentious and I acknowledge that.

Tara Tuttle: My thought then is, do you need to do the sorting? Because there might be someone out there, an archive sort of some sort that would love to have access to those and maybe they could go through them and figure out what they want and what is really valuable. In which case, if that would alleviate some of the stress of those things no longer existing in the world, you give others the opportunity to have them. Before you have to do all the work, let someone else have access to them and take what they want, that they see as important, which like we said earlier, part of the step of letting go is being okay with where this stuff ends up.

John Murch: How are you finding using music and memories through the prism of Reels and I guess TikTok and those kind of mediums?

Tara Tuttle: I love and hate what is happening to music at the moment. Part of the reason I love it is because my kids will start singing or humming a song and I’m like, how do you know that song? That’s a song from my generation. They’re like, no, it’s not. It was on TikTok. And I’m like, yeah. I think it was that song, Low, Flo Rida, maybe, apple bottom jeans, something came on and I sang all the words to it, massively embarrassing, I know, to admit that. But my kids were like, how do you know the words to this? And I’m like, well, because this song was around a while ago, pre TikTok and my kids were like, oh my gosh. So all of a sudden, there’s this connection again, between what I listen to and what they’re listening to.

Tara Tuttle: And it’s happened so many times with so many different songs and even my kids and I were talking the other day about the new collaboration between Dua Lipa and Elton John and my kids love that because it’s Dua Lipa and it’s trendy, but they’re like, mom, it’s that old dude you listen to and it’s like –

John Murch: His first number one single in 15 years.

Tara Tuttle: Yeah. But I’m like, Hey, it’s that point of connection and you know what? Although I don’t love what is happening to the music, I love that it is giving my children and I some kind of dialogue around music rather than it just being me thinking what they listen to is rubbish and them thinking the same about me. So I love that it is bringing us together again in some form or another. I feel like it’s not maybe just true to the artist or as true to the music as we used to listen to it or the way we potentially love it, but I’m grateful for anything that creates dialogue in my house around music and that lets my kids and I listen to the same stuff without anybody whinging, that works for me.

Rebecca Mezzino: Yeah. I’ve had exactly the same experiences where the kids are singing a song. I’m like, how do you know that? And so obviously it’s TikTok. I sort of don’t like the… To them it’s just a little piece of sound. To us, it’s an artist and a song at a time. And I think that unfortunately that is getting stripped away in its use in TikTok. But there are some other ways that all of the older songs are being sort of restitched back into the current zeitgeist, I think. One of the things I love to watch on YouTube occasion… I’m not a big YouTube watcher, but occasionally, is the reaction videos where the younger generation listened to an older song for the first time. Two boys that I watched, they’re two in their early 20s, they’re twins, I think. They do some really good reaction ones.

Rebecca Mezzino: And I remember watching their reaction to Jolene by Dolly Parton and just… They did a reaction to Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight and that reaction video actually prompted the song to get up to number one in Spotify downloads or something like that. So they’re bringing back all of these songs, which is awesome. So I actually prefer that because is it’s the entire song and it’s an appreciation of the song and these people who do these reaction videos, they appreciate the songs and they have really good feedback on them and all of that. And so it’s really wonderful to watch something that you loved. When they dig You’re The Voice, I cried. I’m watching that, I’m crying as they’re appreciating what we feel so strongly about ourselves and this is American kids, so they didn’t really even know who John Farnham was. Watching them hear something for the first time that we love so much is awesome.

Rebecca Mezzino: So I really like that side of it all, but I don’t really like as much the chopping up and using just a little bit of something because the artist and the emotion gets lost. My son’s very much a nostalgic listener as well. He doesn’t listen to new music very much. He’s very retro, so he likes to listen to… He’s got stuff from 60s right through to the noughties that he listen to. And sometimes he’ll play his favourites in the car and I’m like, oh, this is on your list? Okay, well that’s a bit surprising. How’d you hear that? And he doesn’t say TikTok, which is awesome. It’s usually off a Marvel movie or it’s off something else that he’s seen or it’s off my list.

John Murch: I’m really appreciative that you mentioned that because we released a conversation with Don McLean about our American Pie, which celebrated 50 years, 50 years, that song and album’s been out and it was in the latest Marvel movie and it had American Pie as like this driving scene that was a pivotable part of said movie.

Rebecca Mezzino: Ethan introduced me to one song because this song came on and I was like, this is awesome. I said, this sounds like 60s and he goes, yeah, I think it is. And it’s Rubberband Man and it’s a really cool song and it’s on my favourites list now and I listen to it quite a lot, but it was in Guardians of the Galaxy. And they’ve actually got in the themes in Guardian of the Galaxy is that retro music because the main character loves his 80s music, but he has… There’s a few genres. And so yeah, this song came on and he goes, oh yeah, it’s off Guardians of the Galaxy and I love it. So he’s gone and pulled songs through… And I do that all the time. My collection is from… Because I don’t listen to anything new, I actually find things accidentally.

Rebecca Mezzino: So, I’ve got a song on my list that came from the Schitt’s Creek making-of for the last season and I heard it and I was like I have to figure out what that is. And so I found it and I got, now it’s on my favourites list. So that happens to me all the time. Soundtracks from shows I love or movies that I love and they pop into my list. So I think that is going to continue to happen, which is awesome. And the more that they bring these older songs into the movies, the more I think… At least that gets that appreciation of the whole artist and the whole time.

John Murch: Tara, what’s your favourite TV theme?

Tara Tuttle: Whoa, that’s a big question. I’m going to have to think about it.

Rebecca Mezzino: C’mon it has to be golden girls, doesn’t it?

Tara Tuttle: No.

Rebecca Mezzino: Everyone loves golden girls. The Mash one.

Tara Tuttle: Honestly, I’ve watched every episode of Mash. It’s like that’s part of the soundtrack of my life, definitely.

John Murch: What was the last declutter thing that you did, Tara?

Tara Tuttle: I have been decluttering my digital photos. This has been ongoing for the last 12 months. We moved here to the US December 20 and it was one of those jobs on my list. I have a tendency to take five photos for every photo. So my kids stand somewhere in front of a picturesque scene and I take five snaps hoping that one of them, both their eyes will be open and they’ll both be smiling or a selfie of the family or whatever the scene is. And I had a look recently at my camera roll on my phone and I had over five and a half thousand photos and my husband has about 120 on his phone because he takes one photo of every scene. My issue is that I will take five and instead of then in that instant or in the car on the way home or on the weekend or in the ad break, if I’m watching TV or something, I should go through and work out that one is the good one and delete the other four, but I don’t, I keep all five.

Tara Tuttle: And when you multiply that by events and days and weeks over and over, I have so many photos. So I’ve been going through and culling the duplicates of photos and just keeping the best then on top of that, because I’ve been making photo books for my kids, I’ve been going through photos back at the moment to about 2010. I’m trying to take a bit of a best of mentality or a hall of fame mentality and keep the best of the best and at the rest go. So decluttering photos is my thing at the moment, but it’s time consuming and it’s not very rewarding. I don’t get to see like an empty bookshelf at the end of it. There’s just less files. It’s just a number appreciation game, but I’m sure it’ll be satisfying.

John Murch: I feel better about my MP3 collection now. Bec, what’s the latest decluttering you been doing?

Rebecca Mezzino: I do it in tiny little pieces because I’m in maintenance mode. So I don’t have any large projects at the moment. So on the weekend I did declutter some of the stuff in our laundry that was getting in my way. So I got rid of a couple of cleaning things I don’t use anymore, like a dusting wand. So it’s really decidedly unsexy and uninteresting.

Outro: Rebecca Mezzino and Tara Tuttle. For their weekly chats on decluttering find them at Be Uncluttered Dot Com Dot A U or on Spotify, Apple Podcast, Stitcher and the like.