Advisor: What should I do with my high school CD collection?

My parents are moving out of the home I grew up in next month, which means I have to go through all my stuff and get rid of most of it. I’m donating my old clothes and manga and stashing away photo albums in a storage box, but my biggest dilemma is this: what should I do with my high school CD collection?

It’s not even like I have that much left — just a boxful that survived room changes through college and beyond. But as I scanned the song lists from Bon Jovi’s Cross Road, The Notorious BIG’s Ready to Die, and Paula Abdul’s Spellbound, I started to feel overwhelmed. What was I going to do with all this music that I don’t really listen to anymore but I still hold dear somewhere in my heart? I don’t even have a CD player anymore, except for the one in my car.

Here’s what I ended up doing: I sat down on my floor and dedicated a good hour to looking through the entire collection and mentally bookmarking the songs that I would maybe listen to again. (Queen Latifah before she went CoverGirl? Maybe just a song or two… or not. The Cranberries? No thanks. Arrested Development? Definitely.) Turns out there weren’t that many. Then, I inserted each CD into my MacBook and ripped those songs on iTunes.

I could not, in good conscience, throw away the original self-titled Whitney Houston or Mariah Carey or Janet (I must have had those from way before high school), or chuck the cover art for Bad even though there was no CD in its case, so I kept those. I also kept a few cassette tapes to play on the vintage tape player-radio thingy I picked up in my friend’s garage. Everything else went in the trash.

I’d love to hear what everyone else is doing. If you’ve faced a similar dilemma as me and found a good way to solve it, please leave a comment!

Image via Corazon Girl’s Flickr

Advisor is a column about how to juggle technology, relationships, and common sense. Got a story to tell? Email me at lisa [at] boingboing [dot] net.