About two years ago we redecorated our living room. Many changes were made, one of which was the decision to no longer have shelves for storing CDs on. We very rarely listened to them, as they had all already been ripped to the computer, so we put them all in a crate in the garage.
Last weekend we cleared out the garage. We happened upon the crate of CDs, and thought “hey, we should do something with these. Let’s buy some shelves for the living room.” It all makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?
On Tuesday evening the shelves arrived, I assembled them, and as I started to load it up, I realised that I didn’t have anywhere near as many CDs as I thought I did. Maybe once upon a time I did, but I guess that over the years they’ve found their way to charity shops and such like. I’ve still got more now than I had 10 years ago. Anyway, call it nostalgia or call it something else, but that hard drive full of MP3s just ain’t doing it for me any more.
As you can see, even after adjusting the shelf spacing to allow for a bit of DVD storage (yeah, we’ve got a box of those in the garage too, so this whole saga is far from over), there’s still a lot of space left over. So these are my options:
1. Pack those CDs in tighter, free up another shelf or two for DVDs, and bring in some of the stuff from the garage, or
2. Buy lots of CDs, pronto.
What would *you* do, dear reader?
I would enjoy all the space. I like space.
I just got a built in unit for the man cave so that all my books and CDs can be anally assembled in one place. I found it oddly stressful to have my CDs in piles and out of order. This feels much better…. And yes, I do mostly rip my CDs when they arrive and then listen via my hard drive, but it doesn’t feel right not to have them out, and I do tend to still buy a physical copy of music unless the price differential is ridiculous. Having space for future purchases is sort of soothing too. And I like having a shelf for all my comics.
This may be a man thing.
We have something in the order of 700 CDs here, scattered between four shelves in the living room and three IKEA Billy CD units in the conservatory – plus another 25 or so that litter the door pockets of Hels’s car. They are, naturally, arranged in alphabetical order (with the usual discussion about Kylie – K or M? – and Roots Manuva – R or M or S?), with one of the Billys given over entirely to soundtracks and “various artists” (always the most problematic for ordering).
I’ve never switched to MP3, preferring the tangible, although most new music we get these days is in digital form.
The shelves in the living room are melamine-faced chipboard planks screwed to Victorian style galvanised brackets – the type used to hold up high level cisterns in toilets. I’m quite fond of them, but H hates them. We have a further 12 of these for books (plus another four book shelves, mostly stacked double-height with books, in the bedroom).
In spite of all these shelves, we have nothing like enough storage. In our (almost) ten years together, H and I have “purged” books and CDs four times. However, we are both weak and have probably only given about 10 CDs and 8 books to charity during those four purges combined.
My little alphabetisation bugbear is Ben Folds. His solo stuff should go under F, obviously, but Ben Folds Five is the name of a band, and hence should go under B.
Before the redecorating last year, the CDs were all in one Billy tower, which I believe holds 180, and then there was some overflow in boxes in the garage.
I’ve decided to pack the CDs into 8 shelves and that central section, which has left 4 shelves for DVDs. There’s not much space left for new purchases, but there’s nothing in the garage any more (though the contents of the DVDs box in the garage was actually mostly CDs as well).