Here's what a lot of the conversations in our house sound like these days:
Nekos, calling to me from the office, "Ellen? Do you really want me to upload all of these Blessid Union of Souls CDs?"
Me, practically jogging into the office: "What? Of course! Are you kidding me?"
On a walk recently, Nekos and I made a mutual decision to completely get rid of our CD collection. It felt like an ephiphany: We'd upload them all, put them on a drive, box them up and take them to the used CD store to see how much they'd cough up (not much, it turns out). We—well mostly he—have gotten increasingly obsessed with building our vinyl collection, and our massive CD collection had taken a backseat, while taking up basically all the space on the bookshelves in our office.
So we've ditched most of them now, and it feels ... mostly, amazing. I'm a compulsive declutter so it really appeals to me to be getting rid of so much crap. Except when I pick up a really old CD, like Joan Osborne's Relish, which I'm certain I got when I was 13 from one of those CD clubs that was all the rage when I was in middle school; you know, you'd pay 99 cents and get 10 CDs for free and then the next month for the rest of your life you'd get a Seal or Kenny Loggins CD that you never wanted? Anyway, except for some sentimentality about CDs we had on heavy rotation in high school, we've been pretty excited about going digital and not looking back.
Plus, I just think our office looks 100 times better. We moved all of the books from random places in our house onto the cleared-off shelves, and wow. Books are gorgeous. I might pick some doozies out for the Goodwill box every once in awhile, but otherwise our book collection is here to stay.
Speaking of, are you guys reading anything good? I'm halfway through Jhumpa Lahiri's short story collection Unaccustomed Earth and loving it so far.