From paper archives to digital ones, I’m clearing out decades-old junk.

It’s junk now, but definitely wasn’t back then. Now all our data is online, but there was a time when all of it was on CDs. Everything from installation files for operating systems, important applications, and games. These days, the application might be an online service and not even have a presence on your computer. If there is a local installation, then you download it. Back then you bought a physical CD in a shop, or ordered it online and got it in the mail.

Backups of your important documents – online today, CDs back then. Photo sharing likewise.

Under and behind the piles of nostalgia-inducing CDs was a pile of 3½-inch floppy disks. Why? Who knows.

There’s a fair amount of memories tied to these CDs, and all the others in the same drawer. I’m feeling a tiny temptation to keep them. But what would I even do with them? If it was old photos or documents or books, I could imagine bringing them out decades from now and showing them to my grandchildren or something. But CDs? You can’t gather around them because you can’t even see what’s on them. They’re just pieces of plastic.