Collection management...

Another blogger, Single Life in the City, once wrote that she believed her mason jars were reproducing on their own in the cupboards. I sympathized with her statement because I swear my own possessions reproduce without my noticing. Sometimes possessions don't seem like they're beyond management until you begin to dig into organizing or thinning them out.

One of my projects for the summer is to thin out my CD collection...a lot. I'm talking drastic reduction of plastic cases and discs mainly because I need the shelf space the CDs currently occupy for desk supplies and knick knacks. The larger project that this one fits into is to get rid of some clutter and attempt to eliminate areas that have become "dumping grounds" for stuff.

Anyhoo, back to the topic... I didn't realize exactly how many CDs I had until I began to pull them off the shelves. First I separated them into genres -- country, rock, classical/new age, oldies....and then broke some groups even smaller....70s, 80s, 90s, etc. The CDs that I planned to keep would go into a large storage binder with the cases destined for the trash. Those that only have a few songs that I like would be downloaded to the computer and then put into the donation pile (to the local library). I thought that this would take me one day, at most, to accomplish. Ha! I'm about 15 hours into the project and I've only managed to go through 122 CDs. That's less than half of what I have.

Egads.

I swear that, from now on, I'll listen to an album online before determining if I should purchase it. In retrospect, spending $.99 for a song on iTunes is much cheaper than spending $16 for an album that is likely to only have two songs worth listening to.