September 2003

Pina Zangaro Bex 3-Ring CD Binder
Organization... Smorganization... Does it come with Pia Zadora?
Review by Ian White
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  Comedian George Carlin once said "a house is nothing but a place for your stuff with a cover on it".  Unfortunately, many of us have a nasty habit of accumulating too much stuff and we eventually run of out room.  If you have a spouse, he/she is likely to get increasingly annoyed as you add more CDs and DVDs to your collection and try to pretend that it is organized by stuffing those last few hundred jewel cases into that 80-inch Ikea Billy that took you all weekend to assemble.  Why does Ikea always add 3 of the wrong sized screws to every single product that they make and then act as if nobody will notice?

During my annual spring clean up (commonly known as "time to find what is making that smell" in the media storage room/guest bedroom/home office/exercise bike room), I came to the realization that I have 1,936 CDs.

Who The Hell Needs Almost 2,000 Of Anything?

Sure, my record collection is getting rather large and problematic but it is still not close to 2,000.

I took a step back and realized that I had two 80-inch tall Ikea Billy bookcases filled with CDs and even though they were organized and arranged by genre, artist, and in alphabetical order (told you I was sick), the entire thing was a nightmare to go through and really ugly.

While I have never been a conservationist or a major proponent of recycling, I want the name and number of the person who came up with the jewel case because it is the single biggest waste of resources around and the moving company’s secret weapon.  If you thought the Kennedy conspiracy thing was bad, just take a look at your next moving manifest and tell me that James Hoffa isn’t smiling somewhere under the Meadowlands.

There are so many different products for storing CDs/DVDs on the market that we could probably devote an entire issue to it and still not scratch the surface.  As practical as some of them may be, they are rather boring to display and lack any real pizzazz.

While not an endorsement of The Container Store, or Real Simple magazine, I must give credit to them for this funky Adrian Monk-inspired storage system that has me reorganizing my media into something that would have made Big Brother proud.

Pina Zangaro is a San Francisco-based firm that specializes in presentation and storage boxes for artists, painters, and photographers.  They are a wholesaler, so please don’t bombard them with phone calls asking for a deal on this product or if you can drop by and pick some up.  Their website has multiple links to online retailers and regular retail art supply stores who carry their products and at discounted prices.  I saved more than $100 ordering what I needed online and it came within a matter of days.

The 1-inch Bex CD binder might look like any other binder but I can assure you it has a sense of style and purpose that sucked me in and works perfectly.  The Bex is a 3-ring binder finished in either grey or black fabric with one of those fancy steel cardholders on the spine.  It looks like it belongs in Jack McCoy’s office but with an Italian twist.  Pina Zangaro also offers a 1/2” version of the binder, which I found too small for storing a significant number of CDs and based on the price difference, I would not recommend it.  The 1-inch binder will hold 30 of the CD sleeves.

The suggested CD sleeve is the Case Logic CDP3 (3 pages holding up to 24 CDs) or CDP25 (25 pages holding up to 200 CDs) which are available at The Container Store, Tower Records, Best Buy, Borders and from www.casedirect.com.  I sought out both products and only found the CDP3 at Tower and The Container Store, which was very frustrating.  I ordered the CDP25 online and really think that at $26 is the better deal.

Don’t be one of those people who buy just one.  If you don’t like the binders, you can always use them for photographs or for school.

As the sacrificial lamb, I ordered 20 of them and have been reorganizing my entire collection over the past two weeks.  Not only do the 11.74 x 10.25 x 1.75 (HxWxD in inches) binders fit perfectly inside most of my shelving units, but they look smart, and I was able to ruin the environment by throwing away almost 2000 jewel cases.  Had I not insisted on including the liner notes, I could have gotten away with 10 binders.

Highly recommended.

Specifications

Pina Zangaro Bex 3-ring 1-inch Binder

Price: $17 to $22 depending on source

Case Logic CD Sleeves

CDP3: $5 to $6 for three pages

CDP25: $25 for 25 pages

Company Information

Pina Zangaro

Voice: (415) 206-9582 
Fax: (415) 206-0492 
E-mail: sales@pinazangaro.com
Website: www.pinazangaro.com

Case Logic, Inc.
6303 Dry Creek Parkway 
Longmont, CO 80503

Voice: (303) 652-1000 
Fax: (303) 652-1094 
E-mail: customer.service@caselogic.com
Website: www.casedirect.com