How was your week? Mine was a little stressful. Here’s why.

Some time ago, Ginny and I decided to add a fireplace to our home, forgetting the old adage — I just made up now — that when you add something, something else has to be subtracted. In this case, that something else is storage space. That storage space was for our record collection.

You should know Ginny and I love our vinyl LPs. For those of you too young to know what vinyl LPs are, there’s Google.

In some cases, LPs sound better to me than CDs, which can sometimes sound a little shrill or harsh. Much larger than CDs, LP artwork can be seen the way it was meant to be seen. They are big enough to actually read the liner notes, too. (Yes, aging may well be a factor here.) Also, I just enjoy turning over a record halfway through the album. I don’t know why, I just do.

Once said to be obsolete, funny thing is today new LPs seem to be crowding out everything else in the music section at Barnes & Noble.

I never gave up on them. Most of mine have been dragged lovingly from Hillsboro, N.D., to Grand Forks to Georgia, back to Hillsboro (at U.S Army expense), then to Mayville (N.D.), Bismarck and back to Grand Forks.

When Ginny and I got married, near the end of the vinyl era, our record collections ended up co-mingled, of course. I can’t prove it, but I suspect LPs breed, or rather clone themselves at night. All I know is that we always seem to have a lot of doubles.

Back to the stressful week that was. With the new fireplace, roughly half of the shelf space we once had for our music is now gone, which means half of our vinyl had to go.

And so the self-searching began. Do we really need a dozen Chicago albums? Will Chicago Transit Authority do?

Do we have to have 10 Peter, Paul & Mary’s? Interestingly, the answer was no. But oddly, all of Harry Belafonte had to stay.

Good as he was, some of Ray Price had to go. Johnny Cash, not so.

On and on it went. For days!

I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. (Slight exaggeration.) I took solice only in my nightly martini. (That part is true.)

Some of the rock ‘n’ roll and quite a lot of the middle-of-the-road stuff went. Nearly all of the jazz stayed.

When the first hatchback load of perhaps a hundred records arrived, the nice man at the thrift shop who helped us unload said nothing.

After the second load, he said, “Are all of these yours?” Not anymore.

With the third load, again he said nothing. But for a moment I thought I sensed a little sadness in his eye. Just for a second.

Don’t cry for us. We also have CDs, downloads and Sirius XM at home and in the cars. And we still have Chicago Transit Authority on the shelf.