This is the cabinet tucked in next to the fireplace in the library.
The old gentleman from whom we bought the Hall back in December 2015 had his stereo equipment there, wired to two speakers on opposite walls in the library, and two speakers in the area that became our home office. It was nice to have the set-up, so we put our stereo equipment there, too. Only one of the speakers in the library worked, so Tom removed the other one. If we use the fireplace, we have to keep the cabinet door open at least a few inches so it doesn’t get too warm inside.
Top shelf holds the turntable and six-disk CD player. If you notice CD jewel cases on the top shelf, when I buy CDs in plastic, I return the cases to one of our local shops that sells used CDs for them to reuse. (Less plastic in landfills.)
Second shelf is the receiver, and YEP, an actual cassette player. Maybe I should have held on to some of those cassettes because they matched a lot of the albums that drowned in the Harvey flood, and I still haven’t replaced them on either vinyl or CD. (How I mourn my Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp, and vast Beach Boys collections.)
Next shelf down contains the four CD binders with the disks and sleeves all saved: A to J, K to R, S to Z, and number four, unlabeled, is classical, Christmas, and I think soundtracks and scores. There are also CD collections on that shelf that came packaged in cardboard with booklets and other bonus materials. The BIG collections like that–almost all reissued compilations, in my case, from the Beach Boys and Beatles with lots of previously unreleased material–are large enough to be part of the albums that are UP HIGH on a metal, more flood-safe bookcase in the office (learned my lesson in 2017!).
The houndstooth box on the bottom shelf holds a lot of those CDs in cardboard sleeves as well, the normal CD length and width, just sometimes thicker for multi-disk collections. The space to the left of that box stays empty because that’s where we reach in to turn the knob that ignites the gas logs in the fireplace (it’s a two-person job: one person to turn on the gas while the other holds a flame to the logs–though I can sometimes place one of those long fireplace matches, lit, under the logs and do it solo).
I got an idea from John, our longtime friend who Tim first met when they worked together at Crossroads Bookstore, and who left there when it closed for Borders, and when Borders closed, he found the perfect home at Murder By The Book. He’s decided to choose an album a day to play from his vinyl collection so he can listen to music he might not have heard in a while.
Now that I’ve moved one of my old “jam boxes” to the writing sanctuary, I’ve decided to try this with our CDs. I’m sure there will be some I don’t listen to, like collections that were gifts and aren’t really to my taste, or some of Tom’s CDs, because we don’t always appreciate the same music. =) Sometimes I can’t have music playing when I write (if I do, it’s more often classical or New Age), because it becomes a distraction, but I’d like to attempt to listen to what we have and revisit old favorites. If I start this today, it appears I’ll be listening to Fiona Apple and a lot of Beach Boys and Beatles. I’m sure this surprises you.
Maybe I’ll add the daily playlist at the bottoms of posts after the fact. Eventually, you can marvel at all the things you think I don’t have and all the things I do have that you think are crap (to each her own, friends and strangers)… But keep in mind this doesn’t include all the music downloaded to my computer or my vinyl (including my fun 45s from my siblings’ and my adolescence!), so this isn’t the full library.
I genuinely don’t have any more 8-Tracks or cassettes, though, and I never had a reel-to-reel like so many musicians and music lovers I’ve known. C’est la vie.
ETA: I did get to listen to Fiona Apple and found some other “A” artists in the back of that binder. But this is the second CD player that’s had some issues once I started using it, and this one began making a noise that took away any listening pleasure when I put in Adele. I might be interested in buying something else, but Mercury’s in retrograde. I don’t feel like throwing money at yet another device that will crap out. I already deal with daily tech problems. Can’t use the big system because then Tom can’t watch/hear the TV. So I’m music-free again.
I think of the days of real headphones, not tiny things that stick in my ears and make them hurt, but those wonderful, soft, cushiony headphones that not only delivered gorgeous music, they blocked out all other sounds. I’m old and obsolete, like everything else.
After the bathroom flood for a day when that toilet decided not to shut itself off while I was out of town for the entire day, I was very fortunate that most of my vinyl was on the top shelf of the closet. The last box couldn’t fit, and fortunately only the carpet and the bottom of that moving cardboard storage box was soaked. After the earthquake, when all kinds of stuff kept falling off the shelves, I placed my vinyl in clear plastic storage containers on a raised but lower shelf. Since I can’t play them now unless I buy a new turntable, I’m not sure what to do. I archived them to CDs so I can at least still listen to them and preserve the vinyl condition.
My CDs are in separate jewelsleves of vinyl and in drawer chests on wheels. They don’t make the sleves anymore. But I previously did those binders. I found I needed them individually separate so that buying new CDs didn’t mean repeatedly hopping slots until they all fit. My binders didn’t have pages of CDs that could be opened and moved around like loose leaf.
But I totally agree with you about the plastic waste proper albums can generate, especially when organizers and storage systems factor in. Remember those ridiculous long boxes of wasted packaging CDs came in? I wish Amazon had a jewel case recycling service.
Someone does need to create a jewel case recycling service. They aren’t accepted into regular recycling services here, I guess because they are hard plastic? That’s why I’m glad one of our local stores will take them.
The long boxes were horrible because you didn’t want to throw them away when you could actually read the credits and see the photos (unlike with the tiny CD booklets, never meant for aging eyes!). But there was no reason to keep them because they just took up space.
Ugh. So much waste.
Yeah, it’s a pain with the shifting CDs. I leave spaces in mine to try to alleviate some of that, and also a few blank pages in the backs of the albums. I have a LOT of music downloads, which always makes me nervous. What “they” give, they can take away.
Also, my complete collection of Twilight movie scores and soundtracks on CD was in a case on the floor of my car when it got destroyed by the Harvey flood. I have them, but I have no idea if they’ll play. I checked one, and it seemed to be okay, but when I checked another, it was skipping, and I haven’t had the heart to try again–and it’s been more than five years. It was so numbing to lose all that vinyl that I didn’t need any more heartbreaks. Still don’t.
I think most of those soundtracks I have on vinyl. There was one or two when the vinyl was just not on the market at the time and they ended up on CDs when I got them. I haven’t seen all of the movies; I think I just gave up after the 2nd or 3rd one.
I do like the soundtracks though. I seem to buy soundtracks to movies long before if ever I watch the movie!
Supermassive Black Hole pops into my mind whenever the Astronomy Photo of the Day mentions them.
The soundtracks to those movies are outstanding.