Help me store a lot of CDs, please.

November 2, 2020 2:22 PM

What's the best way to store a large amount of CDs...with their inserts? We have a lot of CDs and Mr. BlahLaLa is totally invested in keeping them all. I very much want to reduce the amount of space they take up. He's just barely willing to let me get rid of the jewel cases, but will absolutely not let the inserts go. So what's the best solution?
posted by BlahLaLa to Home & Garden (18 answers total)

CD album with pages that allow you to slip the insert in behind the CD (or even by itself if you prefer). A bit like this thing.
posted by humbug at 2:28 PM on November 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

My insane music friend who lives in a 500 square foot apartment does the following: all paper sleeves & inserts are stored in plastic sleeves that go in 3 ring binders organised alphabetically, cds are put in paper cd sleeves, labeled and stored alphabetically in a purpose built cd filing cabinet. Its a lot of work but he stores somewhere in the range of 6 to 5000 cds in this thing. Jewel cases are thrown away. Large special edition things are stored in a closet. And yes he is single and retired and has too many cables and audiophile equipment.
posted by Ashwagandha at 2:32 PM on November 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I use (among other things) an Ikea Billy CD rack. It keeps the CDs (and their jewel cases) against one wall, taking up about as much floor space as, well, a CD jewel case. It also adds a splash of colour to an otherwise white wall.
posted by suetanvil at 2:36 PM on November 2, 2020

Response by poster: It has to be something that doesn't take up any floor space. Something that can go inside a cabinet or closet, or sit on an existing bookshelf. With those "CD binders" -- honestly, something I'd love to use -- I'm not seeing that they can hold the CD + inserts, just the CDs. By "insert" I mean the booklet with the cover art and liner notes.
posted by BlahLaLa at 2:37 PM on November 2, 2020

I found binders too up way too much space with the whole binder thing. Plus, adding and substracting discs while keeping them in order was a pain in the ass.

After I ripped all my CDs to digital, I bought a couple thousand soft plastic no-flap CD sleeves and dropped the CD and the inserts into the sleeves. The inserts from the back of the case (tray liners, rather than booklets) stick out a bit on top but I didn't care because I was then filing them in drawers. Your husband might, I dunno. Or he might not even care about keeping that piece. The secret was buying the cheapest, shittiest ones I could find, because the better structured ones and the ones with the fuzzy backing didn't really have room for the inserts, but the really cheap ones were more flexible.

Then I filed them all in large plastic drawers that I bought for another reason, but as it turned out, the Tenex Simply Stackable Drawer in Extra-Large fits three rows of CDs side-by-side basically perfectly. I don't think you can buy that particular model / size anymore, but the general gist is still readily available. I liked them because I could have them side by side or on top of each other depending on what kind of space I had at any given time. They were inside a cabinet for awhile and then I had them in my storage locker for a few years and now they living in the bottom of my coat closet. Two boxes fit all the CDs, though I don't recall exactly how many CDs it was. More than 1000, less than 5000, I would say?

This only works if he doesn't regularly play them, though -- the drawers aren't great for constant access. I used to swap discs for my car out once a month and that was about as often as I would tolerate it. Any more than that, and I would want to use real drawers with more structure to them to make it easier to get at the discs.

If you need better access, you can do roughly the same thing, but store them in dresser drawers or filing cabinets that are just a little deeper than a CD itself. I had an IKEA Hemnes dresser that I used as a sideboard and two rows side-by-side fit very nicely in those drawers.
posted by jacquilynne at 2:48 PM on November 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

It's been awhile since I handled a CD, but back in the day I definitely remember those binders being able to handle the inserts in the same size pocket as the CDs. I stuck them behind the disc or in the pocket right next to it.

Or if you want to guarantee the inserts will fit, there's something like this DVD storage binder with bigger pockets next to the disc pockets.
posted by anderjen at 2:51 PM on November 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

this mentions the booklets

or these dvd cases have lots of room

actually, this case seems kind of ideal - a lot of the reviews mention liner notes, so they must fit in the sleeves!
posted by euphoria066 at 2:58 PM on November 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I moved most of my cds from jewel cases to a set of cd binders a bunch of years ago. I did indeed put the liner notes and back notes in the binder - the binder has about 1/2 the capacity this way, but I have kept stuff. About 10% of my cds were in irreplaceable custom jewel cases, digipaks, or weirdo custom packaging and those all went in a couple underbed storage bins.

It all still takes a bunch of space, of course, but it's smaller. I have like 1800 cds.
posted by aubilenon at 4:18 PM on November 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I still have all my CDs in a binder (not like a three ring binder, like a CD wallet only giant) and most of them have the liner notes tucked in with them. Binder must be 15 years old at least so I doubt they still make it but room for the liner notes is definitely possible.
posted by mskyle at 4:58 PM on November 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I'm not sure what CD binders you're looking at, but back when I had several hundred CDs in the 1990s, those are what I used for my CDs and inserts. I never saw one that didn't take both the CDs and the inserts too. (They almost have to because of the dimensions of the discs.)
posted by jdroth at 6:06 PM on November 2, 2020

Do the CDs and inserts have to be stored together? For a while, I had my CDs by themselves in a binder while I had a huge box of CD-less cases with their inserts. Eventually I took the inserts out of the cases, got rid of the cases (except for when they were digipaks or something) and just put them in a shoebox, which is currently in a closet.
posted by wondermouse at 6:29 PM on November 2, 2020

I just did this with my DVD collection and am very pleased with the result. I used these sleeves, which are fairly cheap. They’re DVD size, but that would provide ample room for front and back inserts, as well as double CD sets.
posted by elphaba at 6:46 PM on November 2, 2020

When I simultaneously moved halfway across the country and consolidated my CD collection with my wife’s some 20 years ago, I basically did the same sleeve-based approach that jacquilynne describes. Amazingly, I remembered enough about the place that I ordered the sleeves from that I found their (still working) website right off the bat.

I’m pretty sure I got something like a thousand of these for maybe $25. (They sent free samples of a few different kinds first so I could make sure the kind I chose would work.). Their prices have apparently roughly doubled since then, but they still look to be considerably cheaper than the one jacquilynne linked to.

Those sleeves work really well - they can fit double CD sets (with large insert booklets) without a problem, or triple CDs without inserts. Single CD plus insert is no problem. I’ve wound up storing all of them in a freestanding tall drawer unit that takes up only a small amount of space in the living room, but they can easily go into bins that fit on bookshelves.
posted by sesquipedalia at 9:28 PM on November 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I got boxes something like these.

I got rid of all the jewel cases and put the CDs and the inserts in plastic sleeves in the boxes. All the CDs have been digitized but I love - and miss - liner notes so much!

My CDs take up less than 25% of the space they did.
posted by bendy at 9:37 PM on November 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I did this a decade or so ago using what I think were Space Saving Sleeves. You put the tray insert in one half, the CD in with it, then the cover booklet in the other half.

Benefits: takes up less space than a jewel case; you can still open it up in a similar way; when they’re on a shelf, the spines are reasonably visible so it’s still possible to browse without having to pull the entire sleeve out to see what it is.

I kept digipak style card cases but they were a vast minority.

I think I bought way more than I needed - it’s cheaper per sleeve when you buy a lot - and eBayed most of the surplus.
posted by fabius at 5:19 AM on November 3, 2020 [3 favorites]

The Discsox CD Pro sleeves will hold the CD, the booklet and the tray card in one sleeve. I found them to be the best solution if you like to have all of the original CD literature at hand. They will fit sideways on a standard CD shelf but take up much less room than the jewel cases.
posted by zombiedance at 8:05 AM on November 3, 2020

One thing to bear in mind with all these solutions is that many plastics particularly PVC are known to produce plasticiser off-gasses which can damage your media.
In the vinyl collecting world this is enough of a problem that clear polypropylene (blake) sleeves have been developed as an alternative.

For CDs DuPont Tyvek sleeves are claimed to be as good as or better than the original jewel CD cases for long term storage. But they don't help with storing the liner notes.
posted by Lanark at 8:27 AM on November 3, 2020

Best answer: Okay, I used the power of the internet to order many different styles of sleeves. To make a long story short, it seems like sizing is inconsistent, so some that had reviews that said "easily fits liner notes!" actually don't. In particular, after trying several brands I found that I really couldn't find an easily-orderable binder-style sheet that would fit the liner notes.

I settled on these, which run a bit bigger than the other brands I tried. So our CDs are still in boxes, but far fewer boxes so that's a win.
posted by BlahLaLa at 7:00 PM on November 12, 2020 [1 favorite]