CD Storage?
Yesterday, Brandon said something that made me very happy: “Let’s get rid of all these CD cases.”
Right now, we have most of our CDs in the five BENNO towers that are in my office to the left and right of my EXPEDIT. We also have several hundred more in my office closet though, and in the stacks and stacks that seem to accumulate throughout the house.
We need to condense our music library, but we’re not ready to go 100% digital. These Semikolon boxes look really nice, but I think we’d need too many. Plus, I already have a million IKEA KASSETT boxes in pink (which seems to be a discontinued color), so I could just use those. Maybe if we transfered all of the CDs into paper sleeves
How do you store your music? Or have you guys gone completely digital? And while we’re at it, what about DVDs and video games? ‘Cause we’ve run out of space for those too.
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All of our music is digital and we keep our DVDs in the binders, not pretty but much more practical and space-savy. Now, if only I could keep everything alphabetized…
Ugh…this is hitting home. I am so sick of looking at our CDs. We have far fewer than you, but I want to hide them nonetheless. You’ve got some good ideas here.
Thanks~
I have a binder for all of my CD’s. Although I don’t have that much music.
I have all of my CDs in binders, with the sleeve behind them, organized according to genre. I’m a little fanatical about it… although I haven’t gotten around to doing my husband’s yet. He seems to like holding onto CD cases. >_<
ANYHOW, we've got most of our CDs copied onto our computer for back-up purposes. We still use our disks quite a bit.
i’ve gone completely digital. Just upload your cds to an external HD that’s specifically just for storing music, then gather the CDs and sell them to a second hand store like Second Spin.
We’ve gone completely digital and packed our CDs into storage just in case we need them. Our DVDs will be put into binders soon too, now that our baby is mobile. Harder to get at and get into.
I would say maybe go digital with what you can and keep the rest of them in the boxes you have. Store the others away where you don’t need to get them.
We only have digital and vinyl. I store my vinyl that i listen to most in the entertainment center and the rest in wicker baskets in the closet. It’s not a huge collection though, you can’t get a lot of stuff on vinyl so we just buy it digital.
We have ours in binders. It saves so much space and is easy to flip through.
I had this issue, too, and went with the binder route which I’ve been very happy with for a couple of reasons. One, it allows for a lot of storage in one place, you can put the sleeves in and you don’t need to buy extra paper sleeves. Also, there are some pretty nice binders out and I think they look great on a shelf with books or other binders. And, they’re relatively inexpensive and take up little room.
We went digital a few years ago (Apple TV, love it), but the CDs and cases are piled in Container Store boxes in storage. I think the binder idea is great, esp. if you feel like taking some music on the road, you could just grab a binder and go.
I made husband pack them all up in books around a year ago before moving. We ended up filling three of the largest ones and I don’t know if he would ever let us go all digital! He likes the idea of CD’s, the art work, etc. Plus we’re still old school and have a CD changer in our car!
I say “use a book” – they are less attractive but handy and easy to store.
Wow. You guys have a ton of CDs. Do you have every CD known to man? ;) I bet there is some embarrassing stuff in there! While I like the look of the open storage, I imagine it can get quite hectic trying to find something. Being that I am 100% digital though, I cannot offer any solutions. :( Though I do think the CD binders would be the best route — it’s fun to flip through the sleeves. :)
Like you, we weren’t ready to go digital (who has time to burn almost 1000 cds to their computers?) We combined our large CD collection into three 300-disc binders…alphabetized by artist (combo CDs, like soundtracks, are organized by disc title). This made moving SO MUCH EASIER and freed up SO much space. And once we did that, we made a commitment to not buy any more CDs unless we couldn’t live without it… Other music we buy digitally. Good luck with the project!
We have gone totally digital – we ripped all of the songs we want off of all our CDs and put them in iTunes. We also ripped all of the DVDs onto a central hard drive we can access from both our computers and our Apple TV. I love getting rid of “stuff” – so it was a very therapeutic thing to do! Good luck with whatever you decide!
I’ve gone digital with my music. A few years ago I sold all of my CDs in lots on eBay (lots of work, but I made around $400) and loaded it onto my iTunes. My hard drive recently died and I lost it all, so….back up, folks!
As for DVDs, I ditch the cases and keep them in these really nice Gallery Leather disc albums.
I am cluttered enough, I couldn’t stand having all of those cases around.
As seems to be the popular vote, we ripped ours to iTunes and have the CDs in binders as backups in case the computers crash.
We also put our DVDs in binders, because my husband has WAY more DVDs than we do CDs, and I couldn’t take looking at them anymore.
I’ve gone digital for the most part (I have a few cd cases Ive kept but those are stored away in a closet). There are services that will transfer your music for you…its expensive but worth it to have that storage space back. I bet you can use those shelves for lots of other things.
I use binders and think they’re a great option. When you go digital you lose sound quality that you can never restore. I also didn’t want to lose my liner notes. I have 3 binders that store 100 CD’s each, with their liner notes. Much better space solution for our small house than keeping the cases.
I’ve gone completely digital. I do, however, miss having CD’s line the shelves – it’s a little High Fidelity of me to like the physical manifestations of my music. But I like records and cd’s. However, living in small NYC apartments has forced me to declutter. I refuse to give up books and cooking gadgets though.
All of our CD’s are in binders only because we haven’t reached the zen state of getting rid of them all. We’ve slowly been converting them to FLAC’s/mp3′s, but it takes a while for the older CD’s to be ripped “perfectly” so it’s an ongoing process. We rarely buy CD’s anymore, opting instead for downloads.
We have a small bookcase in the office with our DVD’s, but we haven’t purchased a new DVD in over a year. Yay Netflix!
We’ve gone mostly digital, except for a few cd’s we couldn’t part with. Just make sure you have some sort of backup system. Our DVD’s are in a binder similar to that in alphabetical order for easy finding. We just skipped a page (or few pages) for each letter so our future DVD’s fit in without too much trouble. It makes finding a particular one easy & it’s just as easy to browse for a random one to watch.
I am a big fan of the binders. I got several different designs, all the same size in black a few years ago and organized them. I have one that is all our favorite music and then a few others that are organized around themes. I love not having all of those cases to store, and I noticed the difference the last time we moved. much better!
Be warned cd books will scratch your discs! Here’s what we did with out 1,500+ collection:
http://rearrangeddesign.blogspot.com/2008/10/from-all-junks-one-i-need-more-is-music.html
I think one day a lot of people will realize that digital downloads mean you actually own *nothing*.
That may just be PERFECT. Those sleeves are a little pricey, but Brandon and I both like that they’re browsable.
Right before looking at your blog today I decided Sunday would be the day I organize CDs. I must thank you and reply-ers–I was actuallying thinking of going back to shelves and buying those same ikea media shelves.
Right now I have CDs in books that are so well used they are falling apart. So know from the get-go you will sometimes need to buy replacement books. I’ve given up on having all one kind of book and on alphabetizing. My books are by genra right now, but I don’t recomend that–I know that Miles Davis is Jazz, but what about Modeski Martin and Wood–and others even more boarder line. “Rock and roll” is in three binders: a-h, i-r, s-z. Liner notes kinda fit in with the CD, but that makes the pocket break faster. I’m considering boxes for liner notes with alphabet tags that stand taller than the notes in a box, stored separately from CDs in binders. I need a better system for getting CDs back into the books. Too many have gotten scratched. Also weighing money spent on books and money spent on additional e-storage (ipod, harddrive). With sooo many CDs it can be hard to find the one you want. Good luck, please let us know waht you choose!
“I need a better system for getting CDs back into the books. Too many have gotten scratched.”
That’s what I’m afraid of. If you take 5 CDs out from different binders, then they’re just out, loose. And we won’t put them back immediately. We should, but realistically I know we won’t.
I just did the same thing – didn’t have as many CDs as you, but enough to warrant condensing.
I used those KASSETT boxes {mine are black} and Target has these plastic Multi-Colored Memorex CD holders. I put the CD insert and the CD in them, and then put all the CDs in the boxes. I took the different colors of the plastic CD holders and categorized my CDs. Singles were Green, Soundtracks were Blue, favorite CDs were pink or purple, etc. Looks nice and neat. The best part is, if I want to take an actual CD out, all I have to do is pull it out and its already in a small case for transport.
I’m going to be doing the same thing with my computer CDs that have games and storage on them.
Most of my CDs are in a binder. I cut the play list out of the CD case, and dropped in the binder, and put the CD in front of the list in the pocket.
At the time, it was slightly heart breaking to cut up some of the liner notes. Now, I’m super glad I did it. I literally got rid of two huge trash bags worth of cases. The storage required for them is unbelievable, you don’t realize how much space it takes up until you go through it.
We’re too sentimental (and old) to go 100% digital, but we no longer keep any of the jewel cases for our CDs. If they seem special, we keep the liner notes and everything goes those plastic sleeves. And the sleeves go in uniform black binders on our book shelf. We went from probably 500 CDs all over the house, to about 10 binders on a shelf. We did the same with our DVDs. Whew! Much neater and it’s much easier to find the CD we’re looking for now since they’re in somewhat alphabetical order.
We do not collect CDs or DVDs. All of our music is digital and we don’t rewatch movie, so I think we only have like 10 DVDs. It is such a good thing because if I had all of those things, I think it would drive me nuts to have it consume the precious space in my house.
I’ve been using only the binders for over 10 years and can’t imagine the space needed to store everything in cases. After filling my backpack just to take cds home on winter break in college, I realized that the cases had to go. I keep all the liner notes and the back paper too, just in case, and organize by genre sort of. I really haven’t bought many new cds in years though and managing the digital files I do have is also just as daunting.
Hi there, we are contemplating new storage solutions too… Howver my husband is an audiophile and radio DJ with more than 2,000 CDs. Binders and the digital option are NOT options- he loves the physical object and they are his babies– you couldn’t tell a bibliophile that scanned PDFs were a suitable replacement for a library!
I’m wondering about your experience with multiple Benno towers– we are thinking of basically lining the wall of one room with 6-8 of them (possibly more!) Did you affix each tower to the wall? Or did you also affix them to one another? We are expecting a baby as well and want to make sure it’s safe from toppling!
I attached a piece of wood along the top that holds the towers together, and then I attached that to the wall (I think the wall fittings were included). You will definitely want to secure them because they’re so narrow they can easily topple!
Hi there,
We made the switch a few years ago to putting all our cds in binders – it was a big project and we even made a “table of contents” for each binder; but that was a while ago and there weren’t many nice binders out there so now I’m thinking to update the binders to something better looking but it was definitely the best move we ever made it saves SO MUCH space. OF course we still have two Ikea CD towers out filled with DVDS and CDs that haven’t made it to the binders yet – need to work on those too. Have fun.
P.S. I love your blog and how it looks, do you sell the designed templates?
I just bought these CD sleeves (http://www.jazzloft.com/p-34281-space-saving-cd-sleeves.aspx) and got rid of all of our cases! The sleeves are great because you can keep the liner notes, something that was important to us. We then just got some boxes from Amazon (can’t remember what they were called) – we condensed all of our CDs into just two of these boxes. It’s so nice to have them in one place but with a much smaller footprint. Good luck!
Yes! I love these sleeves because you can keep the front and back art visible. You can also read the spine. Very useful when you’re quickly looking for that one specific CD.
I’m still sitting on the jewel cases though. I feel so awful just tossing them since they can’t be recycled in curb pickup.
If you really want them organized alphabetically don’t use the CD books unless you never buy another CD again.
I keep around 20 or so new(to me) CDs on my shelf, so I can listen to them in the car for a while. But as soon as I buy new music I rip it to MP3. I keep mine backed up on 2 computers and an external harddrive. Nothing wrong with keeping a few CD’s and DVD’s around but I have a set space for mine (two shelves of CD’S and 2 of DVD’s) and if the collections overflows I force myself to give away or sell stuff.
I say rip the stuff that you don’t NEED to have (the ones you haven’t listened to or pulled out in a while) onto your computer. Then sell those CD’s and use the money to buy boxes to hold and organize the music that you really love, or an external harddrive to back everything up. Get a set number of boxes and promise yourself you won’t let the collection overflow that space. (Like maybe just 2 bookcases instead of 5.)
I love the convenience of buying/storing/listening to digital music but flipping through CD’s at the record store is probably one of my favorite things to do with my boyfriend.
We have the same towers as you for CD’s and the the billy bookcases for DVD’s–with dvd’s running 2 deep. It is not ideal, but my husband is an avid collector and most of the “good stuff” we have on vinyl, CD and digital. Eeck!
Yep, that’s exactly what we’ve got going on with the DVDs.
I put everything (DVDs and CDs) into binders a while ago and put my favorite CDs on my iPod, too. I’m a live music trader, so there was A LOT to transfer!
My boyfriend is a radio DJ with a specialty show (in addition to his normal job) and he carries everything in binders since his station doesn’t have nearly as good a collection of his genre. The rest of the DJs just use the computerized system to program their shows.
I really like those cute boxes, but I think they take up a lot of space compared to the binders.
whatever you do, please, oh please say you’ll be recycling all the discarded jewel cases!!! :)
I had never thought of removing our DVD collection from their cases, but now that it’s been mentioned, I’m just thinking “duh!” That would solve so many problems in our tight for storage space!!
You cannot easily recycle the jewel cases. We have all of our CDs in a jukebox system and we keep the liner notes in binders. I had boxes filled with the empty jewel cases and when I tried to dispose of them I found out that you can’t recycle them in the curbside container. I found a company that will recycle them but you have to ship to them and they charge by the pound (and the pounds really add up!)
Oh, I just assumed we could recycle them with all the other plastics. That isn’t the case?
I love the idea of using paper sleeves and storing them in pretty boxes. You could even label them like a recipe box!
I use CD Pages in a binder. I put the CD on one side, and the liner/booklet on the other. I still need to ditch all the jewel cases, but much more space effective!
I think I have a pile of CDs sitting on my kitchen counter as we speak:) It’s never ending, but my husband still buys CDs for the artwork. I too am looking for a way to organize those. But our biggest problem is the Xbox360/Wii/Playstation video games and my husband’s large collection of DVDs (it was at one point around 500). Right now they are in baskets and several bookshelves but they always seem to mulitply on my living room floor. How do you make those collections “lovely”?
Exactly. That’s why I’m so excited about tackling this project!
where do we store music? wherever we can! we love music and i don’t mind all of those jewel cases hangin’ around. it’s nostalgic in a way to still have all of those clunky things. i love liner notes and album art, so there’s no way this chick is ever going fully digital. i buy the album, rip it to my computer and then to the ipod. there’s just something so comforting about having the physical album in its entirety (and there’s nothing like the smell of vinyl!).
at one point, i had approximately 1500 cds… since 2006 i’ve been slowly uploading them and selling off the vast majority of my collection. i just don’t listen to music the same way anymore and after moving three times, i just wanted to get rid of the clutter! then i realized after subscribing to netfix that i will never buy a physical dvd again. so, rather than having a “dead” collection, we are currently going digital on our dvds, too.
be very, very careful with cd books. i worked in a cd store that bought used cds and i could always tell who had stored them that way… usually, they were scratched up.
I love those ideas – I hate CD cases – and when lovely bebés become toddlers cases tend to get cracked. I know from experience. Throw them out! Keeping the inserts might be helpful.
Such great ideas you have here. Your blog is wonderful.
I went digital ages ago. I got sick of the room all the CDs took up. I sat down and threw out thousands of jeweled cases. I did the same thing for most of my DVDs too.
I tend to buy less music now because I don’t like to buy online either. I usually just listen to Last.fm at home or pandora when I’m out and about.
I *wish* DH would go digital. No luck there. We have our CD stored in a large case (very similar to your Benno towers) nestled into a small alcove behind our master bedroom door. Not very sexy, but we don’t have anywhere else to put them.
For DVDs, we have a large trunk that serves as the coffee table in our family room, and the DVDs all go in there. I like that they aren’t out, visually cluttering up the room. If only I could do that with the CDs…
we just made the switcheroo to binders – praise the lord.
We saved the insert/covers for the one’s we really liked and then just put the other’s into cloth binders (from the hold everything liquidation…may they RIP). Yeah, so that will probably tell you how long I’ve been putting off that project. I felt so badly for the landfill when we tossed all of those plastic cases, but all in all it was fabulous.
Right now, we don’t have that many DVDs – but we’ll probably have to go that route, too – eventually.
Ahhh, Hold Everything (how I miss thee). So that was what, five or six years ago? ;)
oh btw, we’re never going digital. I just won’t happen. we’re still stuck on vinyl… :)
We do the sleeved books. I can’t make myself go completely digital. I still like to look at all the pretties in the jacket of the music or dvd. Good luck!
Our music is all digital- but we have a ton of dvds that we store! My husband uses all binders for his CD/DVD storage (about 12 binders?). I use paper sleeves in a box with dividers separating alphabetically, I have experience with both. HANDS DOWN, I’d say go with sleeves and boxes. You do have to pull them out to find what you’re looking for, but I’ve never found it a problem as long as you keep them alphabetical. Those binders are awful- they were ok at first, but they’ve worn really poorly. Any time I have to go dig something out the pages are falling all over the place. IMHO, serious CD storage is too heavy for most binder sleeves- plus the boxes are prettier. :)
Thank you — that’s really helpful.
I went completely digital a few years ago. I would upload a certain # of discs each day and then save them to an external hard drive. I also have a backed up DVD of my music in case the hard drive craters. I then sold them to a used music store and made just enough to pay for the ipod.
Hubs still holds onto to certain cds and he keeps those in a binder. Otherwise, he would be completely digital.
The one caveat if you take the cds out of the plastic cases, is that you can’t sell them if you are missing the back portion of the booklet.
I find I listen to all my music now that its all in one place. I shuffle and you never know what you will find. With cds, I only listened to certain ones.
I have all of my music on an external hard drive. We started going digital five years ago. We would sell the CDs we felt we could let go of as we transferred them. We ended up with a small core group that we held on to until last year when I was finally ready to just let all of them go. I found that I wasn’t ever listening to the actual CDs and that they were just bugging me with the space that they took up. I do not regret it at all! In fact, we sold all of our DVDs too…if I want to watch something again I would rather borrow it from the library than have it take up space at home.
I’m sure that whatever you end up doing will look as great as it functions!
We have gone digital over here, yet I’m still fighting to have the CDs put away and out of sight. I’ve been downloading music for so long that the CDs are completely outdated with my tastes, or I’ve downloaded them as well. I would love to be rid of the clutter…
Yeah, our CDs are a little outdated too (since most of our new music is from iTunes). We do still listen to a lot of it though, and Brandon likes to burn CDs of our newly purchased music sometimes.
We use these from the Container Store: (Portofino CD Case)
http://www.containerstore.com/browse/Product.jhtml?CATID=225&PRODID=10022644
Each one holds 100, and I think they make “flipping” through the discs easier. Binders are nice, but I think there is way too much handling of the discs. I finally convinced my husband to use these for our DVDs and CDs, and he loves them (although I still can’t get him to get rid of video game cases).
Don’t you love it when our menfolk have a moment of design clarity? :]
I love my ipod, I just don’t miss the clutter of all the cd cases. I wanted to invite you to participate in my giveaway. It starst today. Good Luck!
We have a library card catalog for all our DVDs and CDs. We store the discs in paper sleeves. That said, we still haven’t taken on the task of properly filing them all.
We’re at the same stage of parenthood as you are, but when our son is old enough to watch movies, we’ll put them on our Apple TV so that the discs themselves don’t get abused and/or destroyed.
So smart! OK, we have to look into getting an Apple TV now. Kids + DVDs = sandboxing (our term for scratched-up discs).
We have all our CD’s on iTunes. All the disc’s and liner notes were taken out of the jewel cases and put in binders. The binders are in a small trunk in the guest room. I haven’t been able to go totally digital … can’t let go, but I got tired of looking at them.
We did the same for our DVD’s. The inserts are in a binder (okay, two), alphabetically, and the discs are in binders. All fit in an armoire drawer in the living room.
I’m with all the people who say don’t use the binders or the sleeves! I also worked in a music store for a while, and also saw tons of CDs completely ruined from putting them in and taking them out of any kind of sleeve, or even just from leaving them in the sleeves for a long period of time. Even people who were very careful music fanatics had wrecked their CDs. And like others have said, if you do want to sell some later, if you don’t have the cases you won’t be able to do so. Theses things save a lot of space, but may cause you a lot of heartache in the end!
This is an option: http://www.containerstore.com/browse/Product.jhtml?CATID=225&PRODID=10022645
All my music is digital these days. the only CD I’ve bought in the past 5 or 6 years was the latest Weird Al album.
As for having time to burn old CD collections onto your computer, this is the perfect task for a young friend/relative! My mom had about 1000 CDs, and she paid my brother’s girlfriend (unemployed at the time) to do it for her.
We use binders. They aren’t all that organized though. It’s impossible to alphabetize everything, since there are always new cd’s to add. So for the most part, we just guess which binder a particular cd is. We can make good assumptions based on chronology (newer music in the newer binders). We do still have the jewel cases though. They are in two big trunks in our garage and also in our dining room buffet. :)
I’d love to go completely digital, but that would be quite a project. Plus we don’t have a way to play our iPods in our cars. I tried to get a new stereo to no avail, so cd’s will have to do for now.
At Casa de Falconhead we’ve gone mostly digital. JEGs and I both have an iPod, and he also has an XM radio. Any CDs that we do own are kept in a CD binder in our cars.
To be completely honest, I’ve never been a CD “collector” if you will. If I really liked a song or band, I did the old fashio way- waited to hear it on the radio.
LB
My husband is not only a gamer, but a video game & video game console collector and is also a movie aficionado. Since we married 5 yrs. ago, I haven’t put my hand of organization among his stuff due to fear of the enormity of his collection. I don’t even think HE knows how much stuff he truly has. Now that we have moved into a new place, we will be tackling this project very soon. Right now, He pretty much has stuff in big plastic tote bins.
But, we have about 3 of these: http://www.containerstore.com/browse/Product.jhtml?CATID=225&PRODID=10014131 and he seems to really like it. I like that it’s easily accessible and we can always buy more as his collection expands.
As far as video games (all different sizes) or video consoles…that’s a whole another story….
I can’t bear to get rid of our CD’s, either. So all of ours are stored in binders – CD in the front, CD booklet on the back.
We also store our DVD’s this way. Even the kids’ movies have their own binder, so it couldn’t be easier for them to flip through and find a movie.
We went the way of binders a long time ago. We have different ones for music and for movies. It saves so much space and is very easy to look through. I organize the binders alphabetically, and if you need to add just put a new sleeve in there.
When I got my new computer, I spent a couple of weekends ripping all my cds into iTunes. Time-consuming, but totally worth it. Just make sure not to do it for hours and hours because you’ll burn out your optical dealy on your cd drive :)
Went binders too. But save all your cases! When you finally go digital, sell your CD’s at a used cd or bookstore. At least you get a few cents for each. I threw mine away, and then went digital. Couldn’t resell a lot of them. It’s like throwing money away.
I found this fun little cabinet at the Container Store with two sliding drawers that pop out when you press a button. No clue why, but seeing them pop out like that sold it for me. The sleeves carry two cds each, with room for the booklets in the front. It’s great because it each sleeve is numbered with a list you can fill out and place in the front. Easy peasy to find the exact cd I want that way instead of flipping through pages and pages in a cd binder. Maybe that’ll work for you! http://www.containerstore.com/browse/Product.jhtml?CATID=225&PRODID=10014131
Also, for dvds I went out and bought the half size cases which fits about 17 dvds in the space of 10 normal sized cases. You do have to cut down the dvd’s cover insert, but with hundreds of dvds and some quiet time with a paper slicer, the end result was waaay worth the time. Good luck!
I’m afraid we too still use those Ikea shelves. My husband would just be devestated to see all those cases go away. Its not the most practical thing in the world, but it keeps them organized, it makes him happy, and it doesnt drive me batty!
I will never go digital. I’m a total Luddite. I like seeing the physical manifestation, including the cover art. Right now I have 4 Bennos holding the CDs we have. It’s enough for now. We don’t buy that much music anyway and almost never buy DVDs. We have zero video games (what with being Luddites and all).
My husband drastically parred his collection down to 12 or 15 IKEA Kasset boxes, we sold all the CDs he was able to part with at Half Price Books. The amount of space gained was totally worth earning some cash!
If you think you’d ever part with them, I’d recommend keeping the boxes so you can sell them. Otherwise, we kept his essential collection, and he still goes through them every now and then to sell a few more. We’ve embraced the idea of going digital for all of our future music unless they belong to one of our essential band collections (Smashing Pumpkins, Megadeth, etc) in whose cases we’ll buy the physical CD.
Oh yeah, and our DVDs and Video Games are in about 9 Kasset boxes, but again, I think we’re going to switch to NetFlix, and sell all but the essentials (which may still take up 9 boxes!).
We struggled as well. We are partially on itunes but we’ve kept all of our cds as well. We sorted our collection, got rid of a bunch, and put the rest in binders. The binders are labeled and alphabetized, with subcategories for soundtracks, jazz and miscellaneous compilations. We found a neat basket that keeps all of the liner notes alphabetized. It works really well and takes up much less space. Now I need to sew fabric covers for the binders!
AH, you will be SO happy when make the transition. I put all of my cds in the binders, and I have put the most important ones on my computer and on my IPOD. I never got rid of them though. For one, I’ve had a computer crash on me without recovering any of the music/photos/etc on it. So I kept the hardcopies for that reason.
I also did the same with the dvds. I painstakingly cut out the cover art and the back art with the description of the movie and included that with each DVD. I did this because I actually have so many obscure DVDs that I needed something for people to look at when we browse through to try to figure out what to watch.
It saves soooo much space. My only issue with doing this was where to keep the binders, because they’re rather handy ways for someone to make off with all your music and dvds in one swoop. So I try to keep them out of site and put away. Not that I expect to have a break in, but it’s something to keep in mind.
-April
We use the cd binders and they are great! But buy extra sheets.
We have gone digital with our music, ripping the CDs to iTunes and packing the CDs away in case we need them in the future. They’re in the garage.
DVDs have gone into binders – I found some nice ones for a good price on Amazon. They are made by Handstands and look like leather-bound books.
No matter what storage option you opt for, if you don’t at least dispose of the jewel cases you will not save any actual space. Personally, I find lots of boxes stacked around as cluttered-looking as rows and rows of CDs.
I still have CDs, they are hidden somewhere and stored…I used to love the nice cover art and booklets, but it takes up so much space! I now rely on the hard drive where everything is nicely stored and takes no space. At some point I will sell my CDs and rely on the external hard drive 100%.
We also used the Kassett boxes when our collection was small. We’ve now gone digital and I can’t imagine any other way. I’m sure the reluctance to change was the same for people back in the day trying to switch from typewriters to computers. ;)
Binders, binders, binders. We made the switch a few years ago (like you and Brandon, we can’t go pure digital) and have never regretted it. I actually enjoy flipping through my binders–it makes the music more accessible and the amount of space we’ve saved is no joke. We don’t use off-the-shelf CD binders–we use CD pages that fit in a standard binder (for example: http://www.amazon.com/Fellowes-Binder-Sheet-binder-page/dp/B0000AQOIF/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1249078369&sr=8-2) and standard binders. It’s a much cheaper and more flexible solution. Good luck!
A few years ago I took all of our CD’s (we have about 500) and put them in binders. It was a horrible mistake. Anything that comes out of the binder NEVER makes it back into the binder. We now have stacks of CD’s near every computer, near the stereo, jammed into our cars. Every once in a while I get fed up and put them away, but it ends up being a huge task. Oh, and wait until you buy a new CD. Then you have to re-alphabetize the whole mess. I like the idea of the individual paper sleeves. I need to get to Ikea!
Yes, you just summed up my fear of going with binders. Loose CDs everywhere, and an ongoing organizational project!
I couldn’t dare part with my cd’s either, until I realized I needed to release my hold on stuff.
I now rip all cd’s to iTunes, both at home and work, then go to http://www.paperbackswap.com or http://www.swaptree.com, and list them. I get new-to-me music for the price of postage, figure it’s a going green option, and no longer have to worry about storage. I also use carbonite.com for easy backup. ((shameless plug, let me know if you want to join and I’ll send a link from my account!))
Oh snap! I was just thinking of what to do with all of our cds/games/movies… Right now we store our cd’s in silver cases, our games are just out in the open on our tv bench. Any help would be appreciated :D
I got rid of all our cases about a year ago. We use binders for everything (even easy for the kids to find anything they need). It was strangely liberating to chuck all that stuff.
Binders for CDs and DVDs. We did the transfer a few years ago and never looked back.
When we got rid of our cd cases a while back, I got plastic sleeves that hold a cd on each side, with an opening at the top. I spent A LONG time cutting up the title off of the side of the back insert to put at the top, and debating keeping more than the booklet. I alphabetized them, and put them in storage boxes that were numbered. Now they live in binders. It was too complicated to keep that up, especially when the boxes would get full,due to getting new music. Binders may not be the cutest way to do it, but at least they are all in one place.
We have our cds and dvds in binders. Saves so much space and makes it easier to find what we are looking for. We sorted them into different types and labeled the spines. You won’t believe how much space you will save!
I’ve always wanted to move our CD & DVD collection to one of these
http://www.discgear.com/Products/DiscGear/PID-S100A(DiscGearStaging).aspx
I could never go without CDs, nor could I go without their cases. As a kid, I loved pulling my parents’ vinyl off the shelf… I think that’s stayed with me. I couldn’t go without my coverart, and the decorated discs. Plus, I have a fair few autographs on albums. They’re special to me.
I’m nutso for alphabetical order, but I favourited http://www.flickr.com/photos/sugarfreak/28216219/ ages ago. I love the look of this!
Have you heard of Apple TV? We just purchased it and uploaded all of our CD’s that you can play on it through the television. The best part about it is that the television shows your pictures, that are stored on your computer, while it is playing music!
Before the Apple TV, we threw out the CD cases and stored the CD’s in those big CD holder cases.
-Desiree
I did this about 4 years ago. I put all the CD’s and their booklets into binders alphabetically(really the most space saving and easiest to reference way). It’s good to have for back up in case the computer goes. What used to take up mounds of space now fit into 4 compact binders! I got my binders from Exposures but they no longer make them :o(
We recently moved, so sorting through/getting rid of CDs was a *must*! We put all of our CDs on an external hard drive and then sold about 2/3 of them, keeping only our absolute favorites (and the ones that the reuse store wouldn’t buy from us). The CDs sit in a clear rubbermaid container in the basement – since we have digital copies, we don’t use them often enough for them to have a place in our decor, but they’re easily accessible when we need them.
We threw our CDs away a couple of years ago. My husband is a DJ and he was in love with his records, but he went digital too. He still has his records though.
I put all my CDs with their booklets in a binder. I got tired of having the jewel cases take up so much room in my media cabinet. They were using up a lot of valuable space.
Digital is the way to go. That said, I am not weaned off of CDs. And I like to browse. I have spent A LOT of time thinking about this. And also have “wasted” about $200 on poor solutions. (I guess since I learned it wasn’t a total waste. And I’ll find something to do with all those storage boxes.)
I hate to disagree with your readers who love the binders, but I really think they are not the way to go. Besides the good reasons put forth above, there is the issue of adding a new CD: if you like alphabetical order there is a lot of rearranging involved. Plus, the binders take up a lot of room, are not attractive, are really not that convenient, often have trouble with CDs falling out (so I’ve read), and the sleeves sort of slump inside the binders unless you store them “rings-up”, and then appear even more unattractive. Also, you need to double the number of binders you need because, as you’ll see if you research, the pockets are intended to hold CD OR booklet. You may fit both, but then binder gets to full-capacity size quicker.
If I couldn’t have a wall of CDs, I wanted a solution that at least allowed me to flip through my CDs, like I used to flip through records. As I mentioned, my first solution was a fail, and so I’m at making:
these boxes: http://www.instructables.com/id/SFEPJOPFQJZO5DW/ (CD-envelope-size) and covering them with pretty paper;
and these envelopes: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=400036287163&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT
The sleeves that CH posted above are the best. But I am willing to give up the back card of the CD and save five cents per envelope. Plus, during the ill-fated phase of this project, I already threw away half of them, so…
If I had the space, I would buy a library-drawer-style apothecary cabinet instead of the boxes. Why don’t you do that and I’ll visit the pictures on your blog and smile. Ha, I do that anyway.
Hallie.
P.S. We’re keeping the DVD cases! I do like to browse, and I built a wall of shelves for them. We even have room to grow. We admire it a lot ;)
I’m more and more certain that binders are not the way to go for us.
“I would buy a library-drawer-style apothecary cabinet instead of the boxes. Why don’t you do that and I’ll visit the pictures on your blog and smile.”
Maybe… ;)
Another vote for the binders. I have digitized about 2/3 of my CD collection but have saved the CD’s and liner notes in the binders. We have two tucked into a closet and have recycled the cases that weren’t already broken and long gone.
I wish Brian would get rid of his CDs but that will never happen. Even though he has them all stored digitally on his “Squeeze Box,” he won’t give them up!
Check out this site… http://www.mmdesign.com/index.html
It seems like they have mastered this problem
Good luck!
Excellent DVD sleeves!
We use CD binders for our CD’s and DVD’s – it saves so much space!! I would really recommend this!
I usually come here to get ideas for myself, but here is something I have actually just done! We are big music geeks, but over the years our CD collection has dwindled greatly (getting a CD binder stolen from the car, moving overseas, etc.) so our collection of original cases is not too overwhelming. I think we’ll keep them the way they are, since those are our very favorites, and they may be collectible some day, or at least have sentimental value. I love digital, but there is something special about having a real thing to hold in your hands, and I really appreciate the cover art and booklet liner notes as well. I think this is why records are becoming/have remained popular with other music geeks: it’s a form of art. Like photography, digital is more convenient, economical, and even greener, but somehow just not so much like art. I’m hoping our CDs will be cherished just like an old favorite record someday.
However, we did want to maximize the shelf space next to our computer, which holds our growing collection of DVDs and my husband’s big collection of PC games. After looking but finding nothing in the stores that had everything we wanted, we went custom. We bought a bunch of disc-holding binder pages (like the ones with the binder in your picture), filled them up alphabetically and put the accompanying booklets (which we kept for the installation codes mainly) with the appropriate discs. Normal page protectors cut-down and taped hold 2 extra-thick booklets. The pages all went into two 3″ black 3-ring binders, and I will be sewing simple covers for them. I may figure out a way to put a professional-looking label on them that says “A-O” and “N-Z,” but we’re happy with them. We like the 3-ring binder because it’ll be easy to add pages when he buys a new game–much better than taking each disc out and shifting it down to make room. We did make sure to buy bigger binders than we need now, again for growing room. I may also try to put a couple of pockets on the inside front of the cover for “currently playing” games, but an extra page at the front of the book would also work just fine for that. And if I were a more experienced seamstress, I might try to make the covers with zippers so they can be zipped shut to keep out dust. A carrying handle might also be nice for transporting the games, but he doesn’t really do that often, and I rather like how they blend in to a regular bookcase as book-looking as they are. Anyway, I’m quite proud of our little project. It suits our needs and our style just right. Hooray for DIY!
“I may also try to put a couple of pockets on the inside front of the cover for “currently playing” games, but an extra page at the front of the book would also work just fine for that.”
That’s a really good idea.
Call me old school but binders just can’t replace being able to look at your collection of jewel cases in alphabetical order! I do love digital but tend to forget about music i have downloaded!
We have gone mostly digital too. My sister has a CD collection that rivals yours and they want to get rid of the cases as well. They have just moved to Idaho from Georgia and my father (as he was helping pack up) made a good point. If you get rid of the cases and then decide you want to sell the cds, what do you do? Just a thought.
We have 90% of our music as records which we display proudly : )
What about paper sleeves in the Semicolon boxes? They look really sharp.
i have an expedit bookshelf, and the entire bottom row is filled in with the seagrass baskets that fit perfectly (the $16 ones from ikea). i hide all of my dvd’s in there, my videogames are hidden in my media bench, and i keep my cds in a book. i like the cd books you linked to much better than mine though….i envision lots of alphabatized or genre specific little binders rather than the 3 “holy crap this holds so many cds and is an eyesore” thing i’m using now.
another side note, it’s less scary to go digital if you buy a portable hard drive thats just for that purpose. you can put your cd collection on it, and then box them up and stick them in the attic “just in case”. the fact that the hard drive is portable means you can get a new computer without having to worry about transferring all those files, also it obviously wouldn’t have online capability so you wouldn’t need to worry about file corruption. there are some really cute, well designed ones out there now also. :D
I went completely digital with my music when I got my first ipod…it was liberating getting rid of all that stuff and I have NEVER regretted it!
we opted for the binder. you are going to love all your space after you lose the cases. Way to go Brandon!!
Not sure I should even post, as there are already so many! Eh, what the heck…my hubby is a super-geek and we went digital a ways back, but held onto the CDs, keeping them in the ugly black binders (I kept most liner notes, but pitched the cases). Also did the same with our DVDs.
FYI, if you do rip the CDs onto iTunes, choose the highest quality – we didn’t the first time and when we lost the drive all our CDs were on, we redid them at highest quality and the sound is much better (and weren’t we glad we hadn’t gotten rid of the actual CDs!).
It takes time, but I actually did it when I was preggers and had stopped working — oops, you’re three months too late on that! :)
While I’m completely digital, my father (with 700+ CDs) continues to buy CDs but also put them on his iPod. He uses the binder solution, and you can put the liner notes in regular binder pages, next to the CD, they fit fine. While alphabatizing is nice, if you are planning to keep on buying CDs it makes that tough, which is part of why I chose to go completely digital many years ago.
I’ve stopped buying DVDs. It just seemed pointless with Netflix, Tivo, Netflix streaming, Amazon streaming, etc.
We have converted a closet in our place to storage. It is shallow and has a great many shelves in it. It’s packed. I detest seeing scads of media around my house; it’s like I live at a Best Buy.
Oy! Storing music. A big deal in our house. We have 6000 CDs and 3000 albums in a small three bed house, but we’ve stored them all behind a false wall of cupboards my husband created when we first moved in. I am also grateful for Ipods as now new music is mostly stored on the computer and backup discs which are catalogued on the computer and stored in CD books from IKEA. DVDs and videos (you can get the classic Disney videos for around £1 as everyone wants DVDs) are stored in IKEA white boxes displayed in this post. I probably appreciate the falst wall of cupboards most as I can still find the CDs, but I don’t have to look at them. Have fun deciding your design!
I have gone completely digital. I transferred all my cds onto itunes on my computer. Haven’t looked back…
We’re completely digital. I just finished importing all of our music and sold the CDs on secondspin.com. Got rid of clutter and made a few hundred bucks!
We are completely digital as well. We loaded everything into itunes and sold all of our CDs on ebay about 2 years ago. Now we buy all of our music on itunes. We’ve actually done the same thing with our movies too and we use our Apple TV to watch all of our movies that are stored on hard drives. It took forever but it reduced so much clutter and we made some money. You just have to be sure to back everything up frequently. I don’t miss having to organize our CDs or DVDs at all.
completely digital. i have put all my music on my computer, and it works great!
Hi …
Well we got rid of our CDs and DVDs. We have a system for backing up. We have 2 external hard drives, and keep one in the car just in case. Then we swap them out monthly and make sure they are updated w/ the new info of anything that’s been added. As for video games, we have them, but they and the wii and xbox are hidden in the under-tv cabinet. We made our own version from an ikea bookcase, using a drawer and cool ikea games holders and a cabinet door on the other side. That, with our black media center pc, looks pretty swish.
The only thing we haven’t gotten rid of is out huge boxsets of Buffy, etc. I don’t know why but we haven’t gotten around to ripping them. Such a huge undertaking, I suppose.
I recommend decluttering now. As your daughter gets bigger, you’ll only accumulate more stuff and your house is so lovely, I dond’t think you’l appreciate that. You need a system for toys… otherwise your place will be overgrown! Every christmas we go through everything and get rid of stuff (mostly to charity) and we pile our son’s stuff we think he’s outgrown and he chooses stuff to give to charity.
Just go digital. We did a couple of years ago and don’t regret it at all — we LOVE not having to deal with storing that stuff. We kept about 50 each of CDs and records, but end up listening to the digital versions because it’s so much easier.
We have gone digital. The CDs we still have are in binders in the closet in our study. I love the Ikea boxes!
We went the binder route several years ago and loved it — we live in NYC and have major storage limitations. We organized them by genre which was most logical for us (you get a feeling for what you want to listen to, then you go ‘shopping’ in that binder and find other treasures along the way). And, slowly but surely, started to digitize them.
Be sure to print a few sheets of small stickers that say “In iTunes” (or whatever) so you can just put it on each sleeve to notate which and which have not been digitized. Before you know it, you’ll go to the binders less and less often. We haven’t opened our binders in over a year and I just pulled them out of deep storage to do a final pass + download before selling them. Good luck!
Ooh, love the “in iTunes” sticker idea. Very smart.
I highly highly highly recommend paper or plastic sleeves and pretty boxes, or wooden cubes with drawers, which is what we put the sleeves in. But the wooden cubes are not pretty, so go with the boxes. Whatever you want, but definitely switch to sleeves! You’ll be amazed at how much less room they take up. The sad part about going digital is losing out on the artwork, which my husband and I really love.
Wow, what a lot of great info on this page! I’ve already bookmarked it.
I think I put most of my cds into binders around the same time I bought my ipod. I couldn’t throw away the jewel cases because I felt they should be recycled somehow, so for now they are stored away. But once I had the ipod, I stopped buying any new cds, and also rarely go back to the ones I have in binders. My husband’s cds, however, are still in their jewel cases, in boxes on our bookshelves… I might try to attack this problem again with one of the many solutions listed here, but I do hate to spend any more money on the storage aspect, when I could just use that money to put more songs on my ipod.
Good luck, and please show us your solution!
I feel your pain! My husband is has close to 500 CDs and I’ve struggled with figuring out how to store them for years. Just a couple weeks ago I decided to built out one of our closests as a media closet and it has worked wonders…the CDs are out of sight but very accessible:
http://libbygee.blogspot.com/2009/07/latest-project.html
All it took was $38 worth of lumber and screws and a full days work. I doubt we’ll ever go digital so this ended up being a great solution for us.
Yikes! Ours are a disaster. My CDs are in binders or in the Ikea boxes you have shown in white. (I have brown!) I’ve trashed all of my cases and have only kept the discs and the front booklets. My husband’s CDs are all stuffed in a duffle bag in the storage closet.
I definitely don’t want them on display, but even stored, they still take up so much room in the condo. Boo!
It was hard for me to get rid of my cases a few years ago, but they take up so much room! I ended up using books to store the cd’s, but I also have them loaded onto my computer.
I think I would put them in sleeves, you can fit more in one space, and they are visual-you can see what movie it is every time you turn the page.
We don’t have a huge CD collection, but it was enough of a hassle everytime we moved that I finally bought a couple of binders and pitched the jewel cases. Even though I rarely pull them out I hate the idea of getting rid of them altogether… I love the idea of a seperate HD just for music!
yes, we agree – cd’s in cases are just crazy. We have a 24″ imac in the kitchen/dining area & we use that for all of our music needs – so we’ve gone digital & given away/put in the shed (but why?) all the cd’s. As far as dvd’s go – I have those in paper sleeves in a white ikea kassett box. easy :)
p.s Eleanor is too cute!
I like the idea of digital, but we have our computers networked and the music was on an external drive and the computer it was hooked up to completely fried! Luckily most of the music was on my iPod, but it was a pain to transfer back all the music. You definitely want to make sure you have a back up to your music, because even external drives are not fail-proof.
I would probably take the boxes you already have and just use paper sleeves or something similar to house all the CDs, and maybe group them buy letters (A-C, etc) which would make them easier to access, go through, and add more if you buy a new CD or burn one.
we have a mix. any actual cd we buy, eventually goes into a cd binder. we have two large ones and we really need a third and maybe fourth. but my husband rips all of them to a special drive meant just for music and he opts for the mp3 downloads more than buying an actual cd. so, i guess, we’re going digital. i don’t buy that much music myself.
as for dvds and video games, we don’t have that many, so we just keep them in their cases.
Ok I just happened to fall into your blog and I see that you want to get rid of your CD cases, well you can keep the CD’s that go in the cases but I would love to have the cases. I saw a really cool design that you could do with the cases. Please get with me if you don’t mind me having them. Thanks
http://www.countryliving.com/crafts/projects/cd-case-craft-0909
I just bought Case Logic Koskin binder (holds 320 discs) and the same brand 30 case holder (for our heavily played CD’s) – Looking forward to ditching all those jewel cases & storage cases that take up so much room.
I love the look, but yeah I’ve gone completely digital.
I love the slappa binders. Each cd area has an area for the liner and a divider behind it for the cd and this keeps them from getting scratched up. They zip close to keep the dust out and I love them. I condensed to about 2 binders.
So, *gulp*, we have 10 of those IKEA CD towers you have. Yeah. . . not good. They are both the most annoying things and most enjoyable things. Annoying when I have to look at them in my upstairs hall everyday. Enjoyable when I want a CD and it’s heading into my own music shop.
I want to get rid of them . . . but I love them too much. I hope to make a music closet someday.
PS – I finally added you to the blogroll on my blog today!
We rarely buy CDs anymore, but we definitely still have quite a collection sitting around. The discs have gone in disc sleeve binder things, and all the cases are in boxes in the attic. Not the cutest way to do things, but it works for us. And P.S. I LOVE my Expedit shelves. They’re glorious.
we went through and took the inserts out of each case, place them in a box (like the ikea ones you’re looking into) then put all of our cds in the binder.
i freecycled away all my cases and i’m happy to have them out of my life!!
I got rid of a bunch of cases… and now totally regret it.
Several reasons:
- I miss the covers. Tacky or beautiful… i miss ‘em.
- Less easy to pick out music now. I think the covers help me cchoose!
- The cd’s got scratched…just from rubbing the cloth holders in the binder. Cannot replace some of the cds.
However… I have no solution to the CLUTTER that cd’s create.
I know… I’m no help at all! humph.
Media Center…..Best ever!!!! Love it…All album covers and movie info come up….All of our movies and Cds are now in the attic in a box……Its LOVELY MISS Lovely!!!!!!!!!
It was a happy, happy day when I finally convinced my husband to let me put our 600+ CDs into binders. I used the kind that zip up, found them at Target. They’re alphabetized and separated by genre, and I made tags for the zipper pulls. They’re kept in a cabinet, so they don’t have to look lovely. Much of what we listen to on a regular basis is on our iPods, so we don’t really need to access the physical CDs often.
So far the jewel cases and liner notes are in the attic. We haven’t had the need to access them in over 2 years, so I’m all for getting rid of them – paper parts in the recycling, freecycle the jewel cases.
My only problem is that our binders have to be totally redone if/when we have more CDs to file. Ugh. It looks like the ones you’re looking at are looseleaf and you could easily add a new page rather than redo the whole thing.
I would definitely recommend going digital. Yes it will be time consuming to convert your music over, but you could do it over time. I use itunes and love it! Best thing I ever did was to put my music on my computer and now I just use my ipod to carry my music with me everywhere. To clear the cluttery CDs in the meantime I would probably go with the Binders, they are very space saving and fairly easy to organize, this is what I used before I went digital.
The binders work great for us. My husband and I have our entire CD collection in two large binders (his and hers). Mine are alphebetical with the liner notes behind them. The CDs now take up so much less space, and they can travel anywhere with us. I was reluctant to get rid of all those jewel cases but now I’m so glad I did.
We have a larger version of this (http://www.clasohlson.se/Product/LargeImageViewer.aspx?Path=/Archive/Images/Products/Hi/383124A_X_2008-10-15_131705_444.jpg) for our dvd’s. It’s a great spacesaver.
when we moved abroad about 10 years ago, we had to pare down everything…so we went with the binder option…actually 2 binders…one for the disks and one for the paper in the case…then we put # stickers on each so that they matched and we could cross reference each other….it was brilliant for a long time, but 10 years later we have a ton of music in it’s jewel cases (because we are out of stickers and binder space) and the system has deteriorated….I think I recommend our system — maybe we are just lazy about maintaining….
This post finally inspired me to get around to sorting out my cd’s. i’m a poor student, so my options were limited to binders or what I could make. And I HATE binders. So I decided to make my own paper sleeves. I went down to my local record store to ask whether I needed to use a special kind of paper, and unfortunately you do, (one made from extra pulped wood, not wood chip?? something like that) but fortunately they just gave me a huge number of their pre used ones. (They come with their bulk orders. I’d suggest going to a local, independent record store, as cheap cd stores tend to just keep the cd’s in the jewel cases because they have better security). It worked really well, as they’re still in good condition but a bit rustic, and they remind me of lp sleeves and old school record stores. Then I went and bought a roll of brown paper to make some pockets that would hold the cd’s and the art work (I was going to use paper bags, but they didn’t quite fit the storage boxes I’m planning to use). Kept it really simple and quick and just used masking tape to hold the two sides together, and I’m going to get my dad’s old typewriter to type the cd name and artist on them. It was a little time consuming, but SO worth it, and now I’m considering doing the same for my dvd’s. (A MUCH bigger job.)
Thank you for the inspiration!
Hi, I have read every single comment and there has been so many good ideas. I have just sold my house and will be moving soon (hopefully). Me and my partner have been together for 7&half years and lived together for over 5 years and we still have not merged our cd’s together! Mine are in the bedroom and his our in the spare bedroom/office/his playroom!
I know its silly but neither of us has been willing in the past to be the person who gets rid of thier cd in what we have duplicates of from before we met, which is probably most of our collections as we have very similar tastes! Plus we are both a bit lazy. (We do share honest! we now take turns buying and burn stuff on to our own ipods)
Reading these posts has made me think I want to get a proper storage/libary system for our collections of all media and a house move gives me a good reason to do so.
We are going digital slowly but surely and with out noticing. I cant remember the last time I put a cd in my stereo!
I just have one question. I am considering a library system in the Ikea chest of drawers as someone sugested, I think thats a great idea. As I want to keep the artwork what can I do with cd’s in cardboard cases? I do not really want to cut the boxes, I guess I would need to keep a shelf of them still or squeeze them in.
What have people with their cardboard albulm cd’s when they put their collections into binders?
sorry for the bad grammar and spelling. I meant to put in the last question. What have people who have put their collections into binders done to the cd’s which come in cardboard not plastic jewel cases? Love your blog btw!
Check out the new storage boxes from The Container Store. Lucite boxes with colored sleeves, holds 120 CDs. The stores have trouble keeping them in stock, so order on-line. These boxes are nicer than anything I have thus far seen.
I don’t have a ton of cd’s or dvd’s, so they’re all stored together in the cocktail table in my living room. Nothing too exciting :)
Oh I’m familiar with the fence you’re sitting on. I was considering ditching all my c.d. jewel cases and bindering my c.d’s for absolutely ages but it seemed such a permanent and drastic thing that I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I finally bit the bullet when I was facing another move and I had to think about box sizes and weights as I was doing most of it myself. I switched most of my cd’s, almost 600, into 3 big binders. I kept the liner notes with them of course and the organization geek in me loved categorizing and filing them. the only ones I kept in the original cases are the cardboard ones, Pearl jam has a lot of them bless their green eco hearts and never mind that they ruin the symmetry of my c.d shelf with their assorted sized cases.
Now that I’ve lived with the new system for a while I have to say that I can appreciate how much space I’ve gained. What once covered many many shelves is now 3 binders on the bottom shelf using up a space 18″x18″x18″. Also, I really like flipping through the binders, it makes finding what I want way easier but unfortunately the big binders too heavy for easy use when they’re more than 3/4 full. I wish I’d used smaller binders (two disc pages instead of four maybe), maybe a separate one for each genre. I enjoyed the whole process once I got started, I found all kinds of music I’d forgotten about and I kept getting sidetracked. Great rainy day project, have fun!
Wanda
our music is all digital. we have a full digital back-up, in case something goes wrong (plus a lot of it is on our ipods, so it’s backed up there too).
our dvds are stored on a server, which can be accessed from any of our computers & televisions. we keep the movies stored in containers up in a closet because they aren’t nearly as “safe” as the music and i’d hate to lose them all.
[...] Brandon and I are still weighing our options for CD and DVD storage, but we think we’ve settled on the perfect solution for us. Thank you for all of your suggestions and advice! [...]
Thankyou so much for this post! It inspired me to deal with our dvd collection (we are about to move back home to Australia) and I finally put them all into clear plastic sleeves and into these from muji….
http://www.muji.eu/pages/online.asp?V=1&Sec=3&Sub=16&PID=160
http://www.qvc.com/qic/qvcapp.aspx/view.2/app.detail/params.item.V25220.desc.DiscGear-50-Disc-Media-Storage-Organizer-with-Index-Album
Have a look at these. Have given many as gifts and they all rave about how much easier it is to access what they need.
CDs DVDs (his collection) and Books (my collection) are barcoded and kept up-to-date with Collectorz.com software and a barcode scanner. We bought a package deal and got the scanner cheap. We also bought 3 carousels to store the disks of software – the carousels store cds like those old slide projectors, but using the computer to pop out the right disk and is connected by usb. I was planning to rip all the music to store digitally, and keep the original disks and liner notes in binders. So far only my favs have made the digitalization process…. Good luck
We had a similar problem with a large CD collection. Couldn’t find the solution so we devised our own which you can see at http://www.abcdstorage.com. It still uses the original cases, which we wanted to keep, so doesn’t save space but it allows you to use existing furniture or shelving and convert it into a system which simplifies alphabetical filing and keeps everything tidy. It also works for DVDs.
Are you using any special sleeve to protect those CDs?
[...] grabbed them from a binder. We ordered from JewelSleeve after Ana mentioned them when I asked for CD storage advice. Brandon and I love that the sleeves can hold the booklet and the tray card, leaving the spine with [...]
So many of your followers have gone digital, I wonder if any of them can help ME. I have a bunch of maple wood drawers for organizing cds and I would love to find some more to match them. They came from now-deceased Hold Everything. They are 13-1/2″ tall, 6-1/2″ wide, 11″ deep. They have those little library-style aluminum metal frames on the front that hold paper labels. If anyone has some they would like to get rid of, I would be thrilled to purchase them. Any luck?