Do You Still Have Napster-burned CDs?

80 CDs that have been decluttered today. Can you
imagine how much space they would occupy if they
were still in their cases?

Napster does not refer to a person who is an expert-level napper, but rather a music-focused online service that was a huge part of my middle school years, and it allowed sharing of audio songs for free, and it went extinct because of copyright infringement. As I am decluttering my belongings, I came across these music relics (burned-CDs), and ended up recycling 45 CDs that I have been moving from apartment to apartment, and haven't listened to in approximately 14-16 years.

As I ruminate about why I have kept these CDs for so long; I cannot think of a valid reason besides just holding onto them "because." I no longer listen to the same kind of music I did 15 years, nor if I were to listen to it, would it bring me the same joy or entertainment (or any at all) it once did. Also, I no longer own a CD player (besides my audio player in my car), my computer does not even have a CD drive, and my portable CD player was replaced by an iPod about 12 years ago.

Applying the same criterion to CDs I bought from music stores, I was able to declutter 35 more CDs. Yes, I still own some CDs, but I just made a crucial step with this initial purge of decreasing the amount of unused items in my apartment, no matter how small or their cost in price.

I have to remind myself to live simply and not overindulge, which is a constant battle in a material world.

Thinking about decluttering, but you are wanting to ease into it, here are some recommendations:

1. Before you declutter, gather everything up together. Especially if you live with someone, you could end up having duplicates of the same CD/vinyl record.
2. Assess what types of formats your music is in. If you do not have a working cassette tape player, you could probably rid yourself of your cassette tapes and download music files of the songs you still enjoy.
3. Deal with your current music collection. You may need to ask yourself if you want to transfer your CD collection to strictly a digital music library, but remember, there is still such a thing as digital clutter. So take some time and evaluate an album, and how many songs you actually still listen to.
4. Maintenance. If you buy a new CD, you can get rid of a CD; therefore, you maintain the space your CDs take up in your home.