One night this week, my 20 year-old, in the process of moving to a new place, brought me a garbage bag of music CDs that he had ‘borrowed’ when he moved out. I appreciate that he has returned them now, but while going through the bag I started thinking about just how little those CDs were missed around here. In fact, I date say that we never even noticed that they were gone. My parents had (have) hundreds of vinyl LPs. As a teenager, I had more cassette tapes than I could shake a stick at (well, most often I used the stick to re-wind tapes that had been ‘eaten’ by the deck, but you get the idea). I remember when CDs hit the market. They were a BIG DEAL. And slowly but surely, people started to replace their LPs and 8-tracks and cassettes with this newer, better, more-durable, and, well, compact music media. But many, many, people still had NO interest in divesting themselves of their older collections. My family was no exception. Hell, even I had a little collection of vinyl – Raffi’s Greatest Hits (1 AND 2 ya’ll – don’t be haters, now), the complete Olivia Newton-John collection, Supertramp, a little Madonna and Cyndi – you know, just the good stuff. And I know, that to this day, my little collection remains hidden in my mother’s basement. Unplayed and even more likely and sadly, unplayable. And yet, whatever else I have ruthlessly tossed over the years, books, music, and movies stop me in my purging tracks. Every. Time. There is an entire generation making their way up who will be able to listen to every song ever recorded, read every piece ever written, great and crap, and never need to find space to house any of it. They may never know the heartache of a scratched LP or CD, the inconvenience of lost and broken cases, torn pages, lost covers or sleeves. They may never feel the satisfaction of curling up in a comfy chair and feeling the weight of a great good in their hands, turning the smooth pages, or the mixed feelings of anticipation and dread as they approach the end of a particularly good read. But I digress (as usual). My point (before my ‘this-generation-is-doomed’ rant – there will be more of that in a later post) was that our parents and grandparents were buried under their books and records and now their CD and DVD collections. And now I find myself looking at my shelves, stuffed two-deep with CDs and wondering, why and what is all of this and in its current configuration, is it actually bringing any joy into my home? So, I’ve come up with a plan. I realize that I’m more likely to listen to mp3 and other audio file formats now rather than dealing with broken and lost cases, scratched discs etc. And I have decided that while I am in no way ready to lose my hardcopy media I am ready to maybe put the CD’s away, store them safely and no longer reduce them to dust collectors. But I can’t put them away with listening to them first, right? That would be insanity and we all know that I’m nothing if not sane, right? Right? Shit, never mind, that’s fine. Anyway, I’m going to listen to and rip ONE CD A DAY until the complete collection is backed up and easily accessible. And as each one is ripped, I will be cataloguing it and optimistically placing it into storage, thus reducing my guilt over not listening to it yet still having immediate access to each and every song, and eliminating some obvious clutter all the while not really letting anything go at all. #Winning #PoserDecluttering #FakeItTillYouMakeIt #YesIKnowImaLoser
