Junking my CD collection

Now that I'm back home again - no more travelling planned until next April - I'm turning my attention to things I can do around my home.

Those car-transmission loans from 2015 and 2016 rumble on, but the total of £8,750 borrowed has been steadily repaid, and the end is now in sight. In fact that particular financial millstone will be entirely lifted from my neck by the end of next July: just eight monthly repayments left to go. And then I can really start to save up - or, with due consideration, I can spend money on certain home repairs and upgrades. One of the first will be a new set of taps for my bathroom washbasin - the existing ones must be thirty years old, and frankly they are knackered. Kevin next door (he's a plumber) will help me there. I don't want anything fancy, just modern taps that look fine and work smoothly and properly. And, gradually, other things like that can be seen to. No comprehensive redecoration yet, but I will at least be able to afford to put some things in better order.

Meanwhile, there are other things to do that cost nothing at all, such as clearing out my attic. There are no family heirlooms lurking up there. Mum and Dad didn't go in for those. They liked to throw away old stuff and buy new things instead. Most of what's up there is mine, and almost all of it could be binned. I'd save the two guitars and a few very personal documents, but otherwise there's nothing that couldn't be junked.

I want to clear my attic for two reasons: one day I won't have the energy (or even the strength) to safely get up there and carry things down, even though there are proper aluminium stairs with a handrail; and at some point I'll want to have a new roof and modern insulation installed. 

Among the things that could be junked are my old vinyl singles and LPs. I wrote about them a while back, and there's a stay of execution on those for now. For one thing, I want to systematically photograph the record sleeves as a project; for another, they might find a new home.

But there are also music CDs aplenty. They are in my attic because I now have no proper means of playing them. OK, the ten-year-old DVD player in my lounge will play them, but not well. Besides, I don't want to hear an entire CD, just the tracks I like.

In the past I would go through my CD collection and rip tracks onto my desktop PC, and from there to other listening devices such as my phone. But the desktop PC has gone, and my current laptop has no CD drive. So I now intend to go through all the tracks on every music CD one last time, note the ones I'd like to add to my phone and laptop, buy those from Amazon (there won't be that many), and then bin the whole collection. No more 'physical' music media at all.

It's merely a sign of the times, to keep stuff like music entirely on portable electronic devices and (as backup) external storage drives. I could also back my music up to the Cloud and play it from there, but streaming music isn't always a feasible option for me, given the dodgy Mobile Internet signal in many rural places that I travel to.

After getting rid of the CDs, it will be the turn of my DVDs. I like to see new film releases, and often enjoy them very much, but there aren't many older films I want to see more than once. In these days of Internet streaming at home, there isn't a good case any longer for using special equipment to view a film on 'physical' media. Once I get myself a half-decent modern TV, I'm quite sure I will be subscribing to a film service - Netflix, Amazon, or whatever. At that point my collection of DVDs will become redundant. I won't need Mum and Dad's ancient DVD player either, which may not go on working for very much longer.

Then I will consider all the old photo transparencies and prints. I can't scan them all - I haven't the time nor energy - but I could progressively weed out the items not worth scanning and throw those away, and then - perhaps over a year or two - scan the remainder and add a further two or three thousand pictures to my already vast existing digital photo collection. Then junk the physical photos. At that point the Photo Archive - my pictures, and Mum and Dad's - could well top 120,000 fully-captioned shots - surely a worthwhile enough family legacy to pass on to younger members of my family, and to my friends if they want a copy. (And to publish in full on the Internet before I go feasting in Valhalla in my twin-bumped breastplate and horned helmet)

So I have plenty of no-cost things to get on with this winter!

Mind you, it's sobering to think how much money was invested over past years in all those CDs, DVDs and photographs. Oh well. It all has to be written off.

Oddly enough - or perhaps it isn't odd at all - the last thing I would part with, or want to junk, would be my books and maps. OK, there must be some books on my shelves - certain paperbacks say - that need to be weeded out and disposed of for recycling. But in the main I want to keep my books and maps, and even add to them. I immensely like the idea of a personal library at home. I don't want my books replaced with an invisible digital version. I like having a room in which I'm surrounded by colourful books and maps that I can see and touch, and hold, and examine. More than any other type of possession, books and maps - paper media - say something about my life and interests.

My study, lined with bookshelves, is the most interesting room in my house. And made even better now that one corner (where the desktop PC used to be) has been cleared, ready for extra shelving. (Ah, that's something else I can buy once those loan repayments end!)