For many years now, I have been collecting music on vinyl. What started out as a casual hobby introduced to me by my college roommate, has over the years, grown into an obsession. Naturally, my collection has grown from a milk crate or two, to a six-block shelf unit¹, as I am now well into the hundreds of albums.

A few months back, I came across a thread on Reddit for DIY Album Dividers. This was a project I have been wanting to undertake for some time, as when you pass from a milk crate to a shelf you also pass from “easy to find” to “where the hell does ‘E’ start?”. Having already alphabetized my collection by artist months ago, half the project was already done and all I needed to finish was the following:

To Buy

• 25 File Folders (I chose manila, but you could use any color; however, the manila is very subtle)
• Alphabet Stickers (I bought these stickers by EK Success Brands at Michaels)

To Do

• Open the folder and measure 12 1/4 inches from the short end of the folder (not the tab). Fold the rest of the folder over, towards the tab. To make sure the folder fits the way you would like, slip it between two records just to make sure the tab shows where you want it.

• Place the 1st sticker about 1/8” from the end and 1/2″ from the top of the tab. (I slid it back in place to make sure the letter was visible.)
• Using the 1st folder as a template, repeat that step 24² more times just using the master folder for measuring. I eyeballed the master folder to get about the same placement for the letters. (For those that like everything just right, it would have been better form to measure out each letter, but that would have been too time consuming for me.)

• Once finished, it was just a matter of putting them in place which is as easy as ABC (well, BCD).