WOEBOT

I was rooting around trying to get some advice on this thread as to a good stacking system of boxes for my squares.

My previous shelving unit, in its tenth year, had by then given way to the stress. I had to wedge a specially-cut piece of wood between it and the wall of the sitting room as the weight of vinyl had collapsed it sideways against the wall, breaking many of the vertical supports. In an earlier attempt to make it a safer addition to our living-room furniture I'd dismantled it and drilled rawl-bolts into the wall, devising a system using four nautical eye-hooks to attach it to the wall so as to prevent it toppling outwards. I've always feared that, symbolically, the stack would come tumbling down like the walls of Babylon and crush one or other (or both) of my children. I had a little life-script all drawn-out in the event of this happening (in spite of my best attempts): compliant divorce followed swiftly by the sale of the guilty records followed by the default desert hermit existence. Eventually the horizontal slats started to snap under an amalgam of gravity and black plastic, and I made haste to replace my old rig.

The good news was that Spybox boxes have succeeded where my last system failed. First I ordered 15, then 25 more, then two more (cos my maths was so bad I hadn't realised I needed 6 x 7). I tried adding another layer on top but eight high is a tad unstable, and then I'd be back to square one and sleepless nights. They boxes aren't that cheap, but they're extremely solid and Spyder (think: old skool rural raver) goes out of his way to be helpful with delivery and awkward customers (like yours truly). For a month or so my room had the not entirely unpleasant whiff of a chicken-hutch, but that has now subsided. My records are now housed in my study, not the sitting room which I guess designates their present social signification.