My friend has thousands of CDs, and I got the idea to organize mine in the same way when I had a larger collection.

Index cars, alphabetically arranged, with a CD number on the card. The CDs are arranged on the shelves and numbered sequentially, without regard to genre, etc. That makes it easier to rearrange them. Want a cD? Just look at the card file for the one you want and see which number is on the card.

Teresa