Question 1: How serious is your relationship?

This seems obvious, but it’s the most important question before you consider any of the below. Is this person someone you see living with forever, or do you foresee a future where the way they chew their food finally pushes you into the arms of someone else?

This is something you seriously need to ask yourself before you consider combining records with your partner. Do you want to have to sort out which records are yours six months after moving in together?

Make sure you define the relationship (DTR) early. Maybe don’t combine records until you’re for sure everything is going good in your relationship. My partner and I waited six months of full-time living together before we took the plunge and combined records.

Question 2: How will you define your joint record collection?

This is a delicate question: When someone comes over, will you say these are “our” records? How important is it to you to make sure people know that it is you who owns a first-press edition of Lyle Lovett’s Pontiac and not your partner? Do you hope your partner lets you consider their bootleg copy of Yeezus as yours as well?

This is where an organizational app like Discogs—more on this in a second—comes in handy; it allows you to combine records on a shelf—thus becoming “your records”—but thanks to the folder feature on the Discogs app, you and your partner’s records stay “my records” for each of you, at least in a digital space. It’s the best of both worlds. This will also help with question #5.

Question 3: Which partner will be managing the organization of said collection and how will you organize it?

I’ve already covered the importance of record organization in a previous piece here—summary: alphabetize by artist’s last name, or you’re as bad as Ted Bundy—but sorting out who and how you and your partner plan to organize your records is vitally important. Back when my partner and I lived together but maintained separate collections, I alphabetized her collection and my collection separately, because the thought of her records being a room over from mine and completely disorganized made me break out in hives.

Once we combined records onto the same Ikea Kallaxes, I took over organizing our joint collection, and using the Discogs app, am able to tell you to the minute how many records we each have (my partner has 200, I have 1108) and how many copies of Billy Joel’s 52nd Street we own (2). Get the Discogs app; it’s the only collection app worth using.

Question 4: What will you do if you have duplicate records?

When you move in with another person who loves vinyl, it’s pretty even odds that you’ll own some of the same records. My partner and I both grew up in Wisconsin, so we both have multiple copies of multiple Doobie Brothers albums, since those guys were lowkey the Beatles of the Midwest in the ’70s.

If, god forbid, we ever break up, there’s no way in hell I’ll be able to survive without my copy of Minute by Minute. So, we made the decision very early in our relationship to keep both; if you have shelf space for them, this is the path of least resistance.

Then you have the added challenge of remembering which one is yours and which one is your partner’s. Set up a system early—her’s are always first in order on the shelf, in my case—and stick to it.

Question 5: What is your plan in case you do break up?

This is where all the questions converge: You need an exit strategy. Simply combining your records, without thought of organization, or duplicates, or how you define your collection will lead to situations like your partner running off with your copy of Barter 6 because they “listened to it more anyway,” or you not being sure which of the Beatles greatest hits comps is yours. Having a plan for a breakup—again, hopefully this won’t happen—will allow you to retain your collection as it is, and how it’s grown, over the course of your now failed relationship. Thinking about how you will separate your collection back into two separate collections is a practical step that will save you down the line.

But hopefully this won’t be an issue for you anyway. You’ll join records with your partner, and never have to think about number five. You’re going to go the distance: moving your record collection into the nursing home with your partner in 50 years. Good luck to you and yours.

photo by Clay Conder