The big question... "What do I do with my music cd's?"
Well, I've given up trying to convince people to donate or chuck them, so this is what I suggest:
1. Consider hiring a high school student to do all of this for you! Otherwise, this is one activity that you can multi-task whilst you are doing cleaning, playing on the internet, reading or doing data entry. It's best to do this in chunks, and not as an all or nothing project. 2. Buy a few cd wallets. Make sure that they are not too big for the space that you are going to store them in. Make sure that they will allow the cd artwork to be stored in the same sleeve as the cd. 3. Load your cds one by one into your computer or iTunes. 4. Once the cd has been loaded, take a permanent marker and write an "i" for iTunes or "c" for computer on it. 5. Take the cd artwork and cd and put them into the sleeve of a cd wallet. 6. Throw the cd case out. 7. Set the files to backup to your external backup drive. This will be the fastest way to recover your music if your computer crashes. 8. Sign up for an online backup service. Yes, 2 backups! I don't think this is overkill, I have a client that had her laptop, backup hard drive and computer stolen from her home. She lost all of her documents, photos, and music. I use Carbonite, it's $72AUD on the Australian website , and $59USD on the USA website. Every time you connect to the internet it will search your computer for new files and will back them up remotely. If your computer crashes or is stolen you can download your files from Carbonite. I use it for my documents, music, and photos. It took almost a month for it to complete the initial backup and is taking another 1-2 weeks to backup the 40 or so cd's that I installed recently, but most backups are a lot faster. 9. Put the cd wallets away. Big odds that you'll never look at them again. Hope these tips help! | 
