What Obsession Hath Wrought
Posted on | July 14, 2008 at 9:37 pm | 7 Comments
In the comments to a recent post on DMR’s “stuff reduction” blog detailing his CD storage solution, a discussion ensued about how I store my 4000+ compact discs. Always on the lookout for posts for my own blog, I thought I’d go into more detail here and post some pictures on Flickr. It’s so much easier to talk about it when there is visual reference material.
A number of years ago, I went through my entire CD collection (probably more than 3500 CDs at that point) and replaced all the jewel boxes with double pocket plastic (poly) CD sleeves (Prod Code SCDDPJ) from Bags Unlimited. The price per sleeve is reasonable when you buy them in massive amounts, which is what I had to do. The replacement job took several months, but it was worth it. I was able to sell the jewel boxes for a nickel a piece to a guy who ran a music transcription service and apparently had a lot of CDs of data to send out. I doubt I could find a deal like that again any time soon. A mutual friend who was in the media storage business hooked us up. Anyway, here is how the CDs go into the sleeves (click on the photo to go to the Flickr page, where you can view it in larger sizes):
The sleeves have a resealable flap, which initially has a white plastic strip over the sticky part that you peel off and throw away. I put the CD booklet and the CD in the front part of the sleeve and the tray card in the back. The sleeve is not quite wide enough to fit the tray card with both spines spread out, so I have to fold one of the spines over. It’s nice to have one spine showing, since it makes the CD easier to find on the CD shelves – I usually don’t have to pull out the CD to identify it. Some of the bags, especially in the early days, varied in width and some of them were too narrow to have even one spine not folded over. I think quality control wasn’t too good. The last few batches I’ve bought have been better though. So, some of the CDs don’t have any spines showing, which does make them hard to identify. Whenever I run across those in my listening or ripping, I’ll replace them with a newer, wider sleeve. I’m thinking it’s been maybe 10 years since I did that replacement task, and the CDs don’t seem to have suffered any degradation from being stored in the poly bags.
Once I replaced all the jewel boxes, that reduced the shelf space required to something like one fourth or one fifth of what it was. Before the replacement project, my father had made me a series of wall units for storing the CDs, which eventually got up to four and covered my entire dining room wall. Once I converted to the plastic sleeves, I was able to keep it down to one unit. I still have the other three sitting in my basement unused. Here’s what the collection looks like these days (again, click on it to get to the original larger photo on Flickr):
The CDs are in order by artist, and in chronological order within the artist. In order to facilitate identifying the CDs, I cut up some comic book storage backing boards, pasted some A-Z labels on them, and stuck them into the wall units in the appropriate places. Even though it looks pretty full, the CDs are not packed very tightly and there’s lots of room for more. Plus there’s some empty space at the end where I store mix CD-Rs people have sent me, spare jewel boxes, and other music-related paraphernalia. I don’t anticipate ever filling up the one wall unit and needing to bring one of the other ones back up. I’m focusing more on (legal) downloads these days (mostly from eMusic) and trying not to buy many CDs. And I’m also trying to get rid of the ones I never listen to. The collection grows very slowly, if at all, these days.
Somehow, I think this is a problem very few people have. Don’t let your kids grow up to be collectors!
Latre.
Poignant Search Term Of The Day That Led To This Blog: “frozen vending machine has no buttons”.
Comments
7 Responses to “What Obsession Hath Wrought”
July 15th, 2008 @ 5:33 pm
I’d say more people than you think do have this problem! I’m still using my Can-Am steel filing drawers – works fine, but I still can’t imagine getting rid of jewelboxes entirely. Your system works better than I thought when you first described it – I wasn’t aware the spines were visible, and it sounded as if searching would be a huge pain. I still buy CDs…though nowhere near as many as I used to. A lot of my music these days is mp3s, which I burn onto CD-Rs whenever they accumulate enough to approximately fill a disc (divided into 20-track playlists). Those I store in one of those briefcase-looking things with the four plastic holders per page (double-sided). The discs are numbered sequentially, so I rely on my database to find things (all hail collectorz.com…). I’m in the process of putting everything (5,000 or so CDs, plus all the CD-R stuff) onto my external drive as a backup, allowing my entire collection to be accessible via my laptop’s iTunes (or any other computer’s, if it’s hooked up to the drive). Funny thing is, I think I’m acquiring more new songs, even if in non-physical form, than I did before…so my consumption of music hasn’t slowed at all. The opposite, I’m guessing…
July 15th, 2008 @ 5:41 pm
Funny thing is, I think I’m acquiring more new songs, even if in non-physical form, than I did before…so my consumption of music hasn’t slowed at all. The opposite, I’m guessing…
Good point. I’m probably in the same boat. Heck, I’m filling up my hard drive so quickly with my monthly eMusic downloads, that I’ll probably run out of space before I get all my CDs ripped! And I’m so behind on listening to the new stuff, I never have an opportunity to listen to the old stuff! But that’s another blog post…
July 15th, 2008 @ 8:05 pm
I only have 500-600 CDs but I’ve outgrown the bookshelf I bought several years ago. It’s time to go to a full wall unit. I don’t think I could ditch jewel cases though.
I also do the alphabetical/chronological sorting. It only makes sense.
July 15th, 2008 @ 9:52 pm
I’d like to use Collectorz, but they won’t get off their lazy butts and write a Linux version, and Vista’s days are numbered in my house!
July 15th, 2008 @ 11:02 pm
Congrats DMR for dumping the Windows Back-Monkey!
And did you know you can still run Windows apps – WINE has finally reached v1.0+, VMware is now free, or there’s ReactOS (among others) which also provide useful alternatives for Linux users to enjoy Microsoft-based applications.
July 15th, 2008 @ 11:06 pm
Oh and as for drive space – terabyte drive refurbs are already going for as low as $90 if you’re watchful and quick… and RAID-mirroring NAS boxes aren’t much more, some starting at $130.
Who would’ve thought that you could buy a million megabytes of storage for the price of a tank of gas? It’s a wonderful example of industry researchers and government policymakers working hand-in-hand, I think.
July 16th, 2008 @ 4:07 pm
Thanks, InfK – I even discovered last year that I can live without Quicken. It gets more annoying with every upgrade and I found I can get everything I need, including online bank access, with MoneyDance – and it works on Windoze, Linux, and the Mac! I do need to get off my butt and get the TB+ HDD.