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downsizing
| ...from 75 to 25 meters |
01 | Introduction
Because a move was in the air (after having lived in the same huge apartment for nearly 29 years), I spent some months downsizing my collection from 90 meters (in cobbled-together IKEA furniture) to about 70 meters.That's how far down in size I could go by selling things I didn't want anymore, streamlining the collection by removing doubles and moving some boxes into the basement which were bigger than what they were holding.When I finally found exactly the apartment I was looking for, I was faced with reducing everything I had down to a 3.5 meter wall, which was the maximum space I would be able to use for the collection.That meant that I would need to fit the content of 15 IKEA "Benno" shelves and altogether 38 meters of IKEA "Ivar" shelf space into a single collection wall that, for starters, I would buy from IKEA (16 new IKEA "Gnedby" shelves in white).And, yes, I decided to keep my collection instead of going digital, simply because I had invested a lot of lifeblood into assembling what I had and because a lot of it still isn't available digitally.
02 | SlimDisc
After much deliberation, I decided to go with SlimDisc, a British company that specializes in space-saving CD and DVD sleeves that aren't cheap, but, as my experience these past years has shown, are of extremely durable quality and just a well-designed product.The jewel cases went into the trash and slipcases, carboard boxes and most digipaks were packed away into moving boxes.
03 | CD Dividers
Because once removed from their jewel cases the CD's spines are difficult or impossible to read, and because all the drawer cabinet solutions on the market were well beyond my financial reach or simply didn't fit my repackaged collection, for starters, I decided to go with Vinyl Guru's CD Collection Dividers, which were the only ones I found online that seemed to have (and now that I have 600 of them, do have) the sturdy quality I was looking for.The labeling of those dividers I did with a Brother P-touch D600VP, always waiting to handle the job.
04 | Success!
In the end, my entire collection fit into the shelves you see above. Usually, those shelves have 12 compartments, but I reduced them to 10 each so I could clean the shelves properly.Doing that meant that the shelf had to grow by three entire units, but because I had the space, I decided to opt for that solution.Besides that, in case the collecting bug bit me again, I still had space for a minimum of 2000 CDs, probably a lot more.P.S.: In case you were wondering, the above shelf held nearly 12000 CDs.
05 | After another move ...
Without getting into the details here, I moved again one year later.This is what my collection looked like in my new place after that move.Because I suddenly had more space again, I reintegrated "digipaks", "long boxes", special edition packaging and various box sets. Because I had removed rows from each unit to make the whole shelf easier to clean, potentially, I still had space for a minimum of 2000 CDs.[Not pictured: there was a second wall with most of my classical collection.]
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06 | Today: "All in One"
In 2022, my wife and I moved two households into one and everything came to fruition.I wanted to have all my collections (music & books) in one room (instead of spreading them around the apartment), a "man cave of sorts", although I hate that term. When we rented our new apartment, I made sure that it would have a room for myself to house everything, including a large desk and my computer equipment.Any packaging that wouldn't fit into the shelves (large boxed sets and oversized "digipaks") were removed and packed away into moving boxes, all of which are securely housed in the basement.In addition, I set up a "listening post" in the living room, added the most comfortable reclining chair that money could buy (for someone who is as tall as I am) and I have been a happy camper ever since.I'm (finally) done.
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Last updated: January 1, 2025.