Agreed, not a great situation to be in. The good news is, you said you don't have to move for another 3 to 4 years. That should give you the time to locate a new apartment. I assume you live in Switzerland based on your flag, and admittedly I don't know what the housing market is like there, but 3 years to find a new apartment sound okay.
Your cat situation is understandable as well. We have a dog and when we moved we would pass up the "perfect" home if they didn't allow pets. No way were we going to give up our dog!
While you're looking for a new apartment, maybe start boxing up your collections in categories of "must keep," "want to keep," and "willing to part with." This way you'll be ready to sell if you must. The good thing is that you already have a community of chess players here who will probably be happy to purchase the chess materials you part with -= and you know the items you sell will be appreciated!
Good luck in your search!
I heard some days ago that I have to move from my apartment in 3 or 4 years. I still don’t know if definitely or only for a couple of months.
This is a problem. I have a lot of books (chess books also, but mostly scientific books on primatology, human evolution, history of science, evolutionary biology.) Perhaps 8 k books, probably more. I will only get rid of the books when I have finished some ongoing projects, but not before 4 years.
Now I have to make some decisions about the things I collected in the last 2 decades. Chess sets, boards, clocks, some chess computers (like a working Novag Adversary), and other things. My collection is mixed. I have some really cool and rare things, but the biggest part of the collection is something that you can buy for 150 dollars or less.
Because I have so many books I can’t display the collection in my apartment. Actually right now I have 4 cats which would love to play with chess pieces, so I don’t have anything displayed right now (not true - I have an old and heavy chess clock in the living room), but that’s it).
From a logical perspective I should sell the biggest part of my collection, as I don’t “need” it - it is “just” a hobby. On the other had I have a dream - be able to display part of the collection in the apartment. I simply cannot decide what to do. I love my collection but I have to decide if I want to move so many things to another apartment. I am afraid I will not have enough space for everything.
Before you tell me I should not have so many cats, it wasn’t my fault. We had “only” two cats, but a friend of us gave us her two cats to take care for a few days. However, she took her own life next day (she suffered depression since decades). We decided to keep the cats for some months, as the alternative would be to put the cats in an animal shelter, and this was out of question. Three of these cats (Somali cats are very vivid) are quite young and playful, climbing everywhere and eager to inspect everything in the apartment. They will love to play with my Solora clocks or to fight against the Novag Adversary.
Do you see the problem?