Gun Room Housecleaning

I started digging through the closets in my gun room last night, the idea being to figure out what I have and what I might need, and to see what I can get rid of, because frankly, there's just too much stuff here these days.

First of all, I discovered that I have a lot more rifle magazines than I thought that I did. I've been shooting semi-auto rifles since the 1980s, and the decades have seen guns come and guns go, and all too often, their accessories have remained behind. A good example is FAL gear. At one time, I had four FAL rifles. I like the FAL, but there came a time when I needed money, so I declared three of those FALS to be redundant and sold them when people were worried about another ban and prices were high. I chose to keep one, but that one turned out to be a bad shooter, so come the last big gun panic, I let it go, too. I still have a fair stock of FAL repair parts and tools though, and even though I sold most of my FAL magazines during the last scare, I just found a milk crate with two dozen more in it.

I got lax on my inventory procedures over the years, often buying a magazine or two here or there if the price was right and just tossing them into the storage bins. After a while, I forgot how many were in those bins. Case-in-point #2, I just stumbled across ten new, in-the-wrap AK-47 magazines that I forgot that I bought once. I do still have an AK, so that's not a bad thing, but I'm over-stocked on mags for it. Good thing I figured this out, because I was just about to order a few more since I thought that I didn't have enough. I'm fat on M-14 magazines too, but I may one day talk myself into a National Match M-1A so it'll need some of these if I get it.

We won't even talk about aluminum M-16 magazines. I'm still finding the odd one or two of these lying around, and I don't even use them any more, having switched to P-Mags.

And then there's the field gear. I honestly had no idea how many M-16 and M-14 mag pouches I have, and I've got a lot more ALICE LBE gear than I ever remember buying. I don't use this any more either, having switched to commercial modular MOLLE gear. Plastic canteens, canteen covers, canteen cups, mess kits...I've got enough to field an army, or at least a squad. Where did this stuff all come from? A lot of it has been in storage for decades and seldom been used. I think that my next project is going to be to gather all of this excess gear up and try to find a way to get rid of it, ideally either by giving it to a charity that can use it or selling it to try to recoup a bit of the money spent on it back. Any suggestions? The FAL gear I have a solution for, but the belts, suspenders, pouches, canteens, ponchos, etc.,--they need to get tallied and get gone. I swear I feel like one of those crazy hoarder people on TV right about now. And I'm still finding stuff down in the basement...sigh.