Ever since I was a preteen who watched the afternoon movie on television most weekdays after school, I’ve been a fan of old movies. My husband shares this interest. As a result, we collected dozens of old movies on videocassette over the years.

When our VCR died a while back, we sadly realized that our collection had just become obsolete, because it’s very hard to find a new VCR. We began collecting old movies on DVD, but kept the videos for sentimental reasons, I suppose.

Then I read that the county nursing home is looking for donations for their “canteen,” where residents can select items for personal use, like sample bottles of shampoo, or nail polish, and also entertainment items like videotapes and DVDs. This was the incentive we needed to let go of all those tapes.

So I made a list of all of them, so we’ll know what to buy in DVD format, packed up the tapes (three bags’ worth) and dropped them off for the nursing home residents. Most of the movies we donated are of similar vintage to the residents (1930s-1950s). I also included several more recent DVDs of which we had doubles; we bought the first season of a series, then later bought the whole series, so we didn’t need to keep that first season.

It felt good to give those movies to people who will hopefully get some enjoyment out of them, and now we have more room on the shelves. Win, win!

Merry Christmas to you and yours!