Back at home this past weekend after my trip to St. Louis, I embarked on a project of mammoth proportions. The task was inspired by my 20 year-old daughter’s statement that she was going to organize her CDs. This has been one of those overwhelming tasks that has been cluttering up my personal To Do list for years now as well. How was she going to do it? I was intrigued.
She presented the concept to me cautiously – assuming I would find her solution a bit shocking. She knows her mother pretty well. I get distressed by something as simple as people putting soda cans on magazines in our house – kids, mama don’t like no rings on her usually yet-to-be-read magazines, covers of books that get bent from careless handling also disturb me, as do DVDs not in their cases on top of dressers and bookcase shelves.
She explained to me that she was taking all her CDs out of those plastic cases and putting them in nice compact CD storage binders. She waited for my reaction but I was thinking. Thinking a revolutionary thought… Could I do this too? It was a little daring. A little cutting edge. And it required that I let go of my compulsion to retain all media as close to their original state as possible. Could I toss away my tradition stance towards media and their containers? Could I actually bring myself to take all the CDs in the house and put them into a couple nice compact CD cases? Could I really throw away all those stacks of plastic cases without feeling the compulsion to fish them out of the trash and reassemble them in a fit of CD plastic case remorse?
Yes. I could. I had to. It was them or continued crystalline chaos – the shiny plastic cases had to go.
A year ago, I would have been resistant to this idea. I would have wanted to retain these disks in their original state come hell or high water. However, enough is enough. I had too many CDs floating around this house of ours – living room, bedrooms, office, family room, and cars. They turned up everywhere. There was no central repository of the CD in my household and there was not enough consecutive space to order them logically even if we could gather them all together. Looking for a particular CD was often just not worth the bother.
Worse than their uncontrolled proliferation was the fact that the cases and CDs sometimes parted ways never to join up again. I have uploaded many of my CDs to iTunes but there were many more that still remained adrift in our home – just longing to be played and yet denied the simple dignity of residence on my iTunes library. Now they will have hope again.
As will I.
By the end of the weekend it was done. My husband was a little surprised but happy too that we finally had created order out of chaos somewhere within our home.
Let the music play. Now that I can find it.
I've gone iPod. No more CD's for me.
Posted by: boxx | July 17, 2006 at 11:52 PM
That was pretty funny. Scary too, in that I have CDs everywhere and {Shhhh, don't tell anyone..} a few 33s stashed hereandthere too. Now if I could only find something to play them on and a thing to record them. Humpf. Glad you found a solution. I am crossing fingers.
Posted by: Sallie | July 18, 2006 at 12:19 AM
But can you add extra sheets in the book, to keep things alphabetized? Having to bump the CDs every time I bought a new one would drive me insane!
Posted by: Yvonne | July 18, 2006 at 08:04 AM
Excellent idea! I'm like you, I like to keep the CDs in their original pristine cases, but that takes up so much room. And it's hard to keep them alphabetized that way.
More and more I'm just downloading CDs on iTunes, though, since I mostly listen to them via the FM transmitter in my car...
Posted by: Thom | July 18, 2006 at 01:54 PM
I have lots of trouble getting rid of the original packaging. I have a ways to go...
Posted by: Margaret | July 18, 2006 at 10:51 PM
Until very recently I was the same way: keep those puppies in their original cases. Now, I have them all in a case like the one you showed. The cover art and back liner I have in a shoe box. Those are alphabetized, the CD's are not as I trade the cd's faster then I can keep them alphabetized. I use a great website for music: $1.00 a cd. It's a great way to purge my older stuff (and hell newer stuff too, since I put it all into iTunes anyway) and get new stuff.
Here via Michele.
Posted by: Sarah | July 20, 2006 at 12:38 PM
Being a rabit music collector, I can sympathize.
I put all my CD's in 4 shallow plastic tubs (I love The Container Store) that stay under the bed. So far, it's working. :)
I enjoyed your writing, so had to read more.
~S
Posted by: Shephard | July 24, 2006 at 12:34 PM