Rubenerd

I have a lot of multimedia CD-ROMs, and Clara and I have an expanding music collection of CDs, cassettes, vinyl, and MiniDiscs. There isn’t much we can do about the physical dimensions of most of these, but CD jewel cases have a lot of wasted space. Given they constitute the bulk of our physical media, we thought it was worth trying to consolidate them down.

CD binders were the first thing we tried. We cracked open the jewel cases, and put the front and back paper inserts into empty CD pouches in the folders. It’s already has saved us a ton of space in this tiny apartment. It’s also fun to take the binder over to the couch and leaf though them to choose what music to play for that evening.

Have I mentioned that streaming services suck, and you should buy music? But I digress.

There’s just one problem with the CD binder approach. The back inserts are wider than the front inserts, because they don’t need to accomodate the hinge for the CD jewel case. That means they need to be put into the pouches at a 90 degree angle, which makes reading the text difficult. They also only fit in the lower pockets and require you to overlap the CDs above them, otherwise they’d protrude from the binder and the zip won’t close.

I feel like there should be a better way, so I started looking for alternatives.

DiscSox are an interesting idea. The sleeves are taller than they are wide, so they can accommodate the back inserts. I’d prefer to have a folder though rather than loose pages though.

As far as I can tell, is a phrase with six words. I can’t see anyone who makes a folder that can accomodate both paper CD inserts. Surely Clara and I can’t be the first people to want something like this?

Anyone have ideas?