The Schwa Was Here: a brief review

I need to take a moment to say that I'm writing this with my brand new MacBook Pro, which I've wanted since I got my first ever laptop when I went to college. Two laptops and more than a few computer viruses later, the day has finally come and I am bubbling over with excitement. Seriously. This thing is beautiful.

That being said...this book was super cute. It's the first of Neal Shusterman's "Antsy" books, but because I didn't realize that I'd actually already read the second book, Antsy Does Time, a couple years ago. It didn't matter all that much; they have the same characters but not necessarily linked plots. And they're both pretty great, so you should read them both (although you should read them in order, just because).

Antsy Bonano is Brooklyn through and through, and his character shines through his narration. The plot centers around Antsy's friend Calvin, who goes by "the Schwa," who is fully convinced that he's partially invisible and will graduate to full invisibility one day. The boys perform experiments to test peoples' ability to see the Schwa performing ridiculous acts, and in so doing get themselves into some comical trouble. It's an interesting concept, and I was really curious about where the author was going with it, but it's a pretty wonderful story in the end.

Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the book that really made me laugh, and also really shows the writing style used in The Schwa was Here:

My older brother Frank looks up from his dinner. "Bullpucky," he says - although I'm editing out the bad word here, on accounta my mother might read this, and I don't like the taste of soap. As soon as Frankie says it, Mom, without missing a beat, hauls off and whacks him on the head in her own special way, starting low, swinging up, like a tennis player giving a ball a topspin, just grazing the thin spot on his head that's gonna be bald some day, probably from Mom slapping him there. "You watch ya mout!" Mom says. "Mout," not "mouth." We got a problem here with the "th" sound. It's not just us - it's all a Brooklyn, maybe Queens, too. My English teacher says I also drop vowels like a bad juggler, and have an infuriating tense problem, whatever that meant. So anyway, if you put the "th" problem and the vowel thing together, our family's Catlick, instead of Catholic, and my name's Antny instead of Anthony. Somehow that got changed into Antsy when I was little, and they've called me Antsy ever since. It don't bother me no more. Used to, but, y'know, you grow into your name. (page 3)

My family isn't from Brooklyn, but let's just say that I spent my first couple years of life living on Long Island and my friend across the street was most definitely an Antny, not an Anthony.

New York Italian accents aside, this book was truly an enjoyable read. The characters are rich and loveable, and even though the plot seems strange it all feels genuine and realistic when you're reading it. It's a fun, light read with heartfelt sincerity, and I definitely recommend it.

The Cheapest Office Redo in the World

Yes, that title is true. I rearranged and completely reorganized our guest room/office for $3.69. That's the price of the small potted plant that I bought from Food Lion to sit on my desk (I know, that's not that thrifty, but it's super cute and it was calling my name). Everything I used to organize this room was something we already owned, and I'm so excited with how much the room has changed with such simple updates and shifting!

First, some before shots. The day I started attacking this room, this was literally what it looked like:

A. Mess. 

It hadn't always looked this bad - I've gradually gotten lazier and lazier with putting things "away" - but to be honest it's never been very organized. We only moved in in April and this room just hasn't been a huge priority. Even though it's a mess, it's all localized to one side of the room so guests could sleep in the bed and still have plenty of room. But I dreaded doing much of anything in here...the desks are narrow and any amount of clutter on them makes me feel claustrophobic, even to write a thank you note to someone. I certainly wasn't doing any craft projects or doing any work on the computer in here. Something definitely needed to be done. 

Those pink and purple bins in the pictures used to be in my closet, holding things like socks, underwear, and shoes. I've had them for years, and even though they've been great storage devices I decided to get rid of them while I was reorganizing my closet a few weeks ago. That's what really got the mental ball rolling on this office redo...I could use those bins for something. What, I wasn't sure, but they could have purpose again. And even though the colors are a little brighter than my current taste, they're free, and you just can't argue with that ever. Then I remembered those little white bins, which I got off a clearance rack for $2 each several months ago. I'd tried them out for a couple different purposes/places but they just didn't feel like they'd found their home yet. I knew they could be used in the office for something too. And that, friends, is when I got really excited about figuring out this room's potential.

My first goal was to take the back off of my bookshelf. I never realized the dramatic change this simple action would make until we put in the Billy bookshelves in our book room back in April. When two of the bookcases came without the backs (oops), we decided that the shelves actually look so much better without them. Being able to see the wall color through and behind your books/items makes the shelves look much less cheap and much more "built-in." The reason why I decided to do it with this bookshelf, though, is because of how dark the wall color is. Although the white pops against it, the black really doesn't. I had originally been toying with the idea of painting the desks, cart, and bookshelf all white....but then realized what a waste that would probably be. Waste of both time and money. So I took the black back out of the bookshelf instead, hoping that it would lighten it just enough to make it look better in here.

My second goal was to figure out the furniture layout that would be best. It took several tries (praise the Lord for lightweight Ikea furniture and really hard-to-scratch wood floors).

My first instinct was to buddy the desks up back to back. I mentioned before how narrow they are and I liked the idea of a bigger workspace that's not making you feel quite so face to face with the wall. But it stuck out way too awkwardly into the room and just didn't seem functional. Plus there are the logistics of the metal legs not matching up with each other, and the rolling filing cart only being the depth of one desk, not two of them buddied up. So I went back to a long desk option...and got super frustrated.

I wanted to take advantage of that long wall and put the bookshelf, the two desks and the filing cart all side by side by side. And I came so stinking close to making it work.

Missed it by that much.

It would have worked if I'd moved the bookshelf to the other wall, but by that time I was remembering the matching bookshelf I had sitting with no purpose in a different room in the house, and I realized I needed to figure out how to make both bookshelves fit in this space to maximize storage possibilities. And after some standing with my hands on my hips and serious thinking, this is what I came up with:

It's perfect. No more claustrophobia while working (I'm not facing the wall at all anymore), the legs all match up right, and it makes that wall feel longer by not cramming it full end to end. After this, I just had to move that cart to a better place (to the left corner of this picture against the wall), take the back off of the other unused and unloved bookshelf in the next room and move it into place. The hubs just had to help me attach the bookshelves to the walls before I could put things on them, and then I could start organizing in all those beautiful bins.

Here's the final product:

Please excuse "You've Got Mail" playing on my laptop.

Some close-ups and explanations:

The bins are each organized by item (fabric, paint, random craft supplies, etc.), and help keep the shelves looking a lot better by giving all of those items designated homes. It also helps me because when I'm feeling lazy, I just have to throw an item into its bin and it won't leave a mess like throwing it on the floor or on the desk does. Each shelf is organized as well: the paint shelf with all my craft paint supplies, the random craft shelf with supplies like buttons, glue, and Popsicle sticks, etc. All my resources from teaching are together too - in the binders - for whenever I need to access them again (they were in boxes in the closet before). That top shelf with all the glass bottles isn't our liquor cabinet; I collect empty wine and whiskey bottles as well as empty candle jars, mason jars, etc. so I can recycle them in projects in the future. The pencils, paint brushes and such you see in mason jars were already organized that way long ago, so they were no extra cost or effort for this project.

The labels you see on each bin are made from the card stock I used for the DVD storage project, and I just used simple twine I already had on hand to tie them on.

The desk itself is neat and tidy, and that's how I want it to stay. The printer and laptop are the only office-related items allowed on there to give me a consistent clutter-free and large workspace. Even though a picture frame, mug with often-used pens, and that cute plant are on the desk too, I put them all inside a tray (which was our mail spot for the kitchen counter in a former life) to keep them all contained and in one spot.

It's not a very attractive pic but it's an oldie and a goodie, and one of my favorites.

You may have noticed in one of the pictures that only one of the two desks has drawers. You may have also noticed that I arranged them so the drawers are on the opposite side as my chair and computer. Although I would like to say that there's some grand and intelligent reason for this...there's not. When we first bought the desks back at the old house, we arranged them in an L, and one overlapped the other. It made no sense to install drawers that wouldn't be able to open because the other desk would be in the way, so we put the drawer parts in a closet and forgot about them. Well, here we are with two perfectly functioning drawer slots and only one set of drawers...because someone threw the directions out. (Me. I threw the directions out.) It probably wouldn't be too difficult to figure out, but I just haven't ever felt the need to tackle that yet. One day I will, and I'll have that much more storage and I'll love it. The reason why the drawers we do have are on the other side of the desk are just because I liked having the metal legs on the outside and the solid legs on the inside. The solid legs seemed too abrupt and made the room smaller, while the see-through metal legs lets you see all the way under the desks and the continuation of the floor makes the room seem bigger (brought to you by many hours of watching HGTV).

So there you have it! My new office space, which I'm really excited to use and have organized. My absolute favorite part about this room is that I used everything that we already had. Between repurposed cloth bins, empty bookshelves needing love, and small craft supplies I already had on hand, I literally didn't spend a dime on anything except the plant. As someone trying to figure out the logistics of budgeting and saving money that would normally be used unwisely, this feels like a major accomplishment. I still have some things to hang on the wall (bulletin board, white board, some pictures) but I'm going to wait to show you those pictures until I hang curtains. Yep, I've been asking guests to stay in a first floor room with no curtains all this time. But they're coming soon! And so will pictures.

Number the Stars: a brief review

When I looked at my bookshelves a couple months ago and realized how many books I hadn't read yet, this was one of the ones that embarrassed me. I'd heard people talking about it for years, including colleagues who mentioned it casually in conversations about Holocaust fiction as if everyone had read it. I knew I should have been included in that "everyone," and rather than admit how I'd managed to overlook it all this time I just nodded my head in agreement and reminded myself once again that I really should read this soon. Well the day has finally come (and it literally only took a day to read because it's a short 130ish pages, yet another reason why there's no excuse for not having read it long ago).

Lois Lowry's depiction of the Holocaust in Number the Stars is a little different than most that I've read. Ten-year-old Annemarie lives with her parents and little sister in Nazi-occupied Denmark during World War II; soldiers with guns on every street corner are a reality she and her family are used to. When Jews in their neighborhood start to disappear, though, fear rises. Annemarie's family isn't Jewish, but their best friends and across-the-hall neighbors are. When an opportunity to help them escape to safety presents itself, Annemarie and her parents must weigh some dangerous risks for the sake of friendship and human decency.

There are a couple reasons why I think this book is different than most I've read on the topic, and I'll try to explain them without giving too much of the plot away. First of all, the protagonist is not Jewish. I know that there are several other examples of this approach (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, for one) but I feel like most literature comes from the perspective of the oppressed (Diary of Anne Frank, Chains, The Color Purple, etc.). I think the biggest reason I find Number the Stars to be distinctive, though, is because of how little Annemarie understands throughout the entirety of the plot. It's not a naive and frustrating lack of understanding, though, like I expressed in my review of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas; Annemarie trusts her parents and her uncle and bravely follows their instructions even when she doesn't fully get the big picture or most of the details. She acts courageously and helps them all relocate many Jews to safety without ever being told any actual facts or insights into what the plan is, and she doesn't complain like I imagine most 10-year-olds would in such a situation. She is extremely observant and picks up on clues along the way, but doesn't press for more information.

I'm mostly just in love with Annemarie and her family. They don't seem to ever question their role in this dangerous fight against the Nazis, they just act. Quickly, bravely, and wholeheartedly, they dive in and completely surrender themselves to what they know they need to do. It makes me wonder whether I live my life in that way, or if I would if I felt like such an opportunity was presenting itself. True, we don't live in a Nazi-occupied country that's been stripped of all rights and basic necessities, and we also aren't watching neighbors be inexplicably ripped from their homes in the middle of the night...but am I missing out on opportunities to quickly, bravely, and wholeheartedly throw myself into something that would change the lives of the people around me? It's worth seriously considering, I think.

The Battle of Jericho: a brief review

Slowly but surely, I'm getting back into reading regularly again. But if you notice, I'm also not doing as much crafting either. So I'm not really learning how to balance my time...it's a work in progress. As you can see by the picture, this book spent some time in a violent 7th grade classroom being read by hooligans, but it did survive which is more than I can say for some of my books. I'd never read this one but felt comfortable putting it on my classroom shelves because I'd read what is probably the author's most well-known trilogy, the Hazelton High Trilogy. Just as I assumed, this one is really similar to the other books of hers I'd read, so I can breathe easy and know that I wasn't putting some crazy and inappropriate book in my kids' hands. I also found out after finishing this one that it's actually the first book in a trilogy, so yay for more books being added to my list! (That sounded sarcastic. It wasn't. I really do love reading.)

Jericho and his cousin Josh are tapped to join a prestigious secret society at their high school along with their best friend Kofi. When they're told that everything that happens during their pledge activities must be kept secret at all costs, no one challenges it. They're all more than willing to put any misgivings or nervousness aside in order to get to that final goal of wearing a black silk Warriors of Distinction jacket. The dangers of hazing do catch up to them in the end, though, and everyone is forced to face the fact that their own desires for popularity and acceptance led to disaster.

Typical of Sharon Draper's gritty urban teen books, The Battle of Jericho has a fairly controversial plot, this time tackling the dangers of hazing. She also works hard to shine a light on how easy peer pressure is to succumb to in areas such as underage drinking, the need for popularity, and even life-threatening activities. Draper, an English teacher for more than thirty years, has a unique understanding of how teenagers interact with each other and the real-life consequences that are more than possible when bad choices are made. There's almost always a shock value (towards the end) and this book doesn't disappoint. Even though I really do love Draper's books, I have one tiny little itty bitty issue: she works very hard to keep the books 100% clean from profanity and sex, and although I appreciate that SO much, the characters' conversations sometimes comes off sounding a little bit doofy. Think Remember the Titans.

It's hard to not have some laughable dialogue when you're trying to depict hardcore, troubled teenagers without any bad language. (ie: what exactly is a plug nickle, Julius?). But I love Remember the Titans and I love Sharon Draper's books. And I'm excited to get my hands on the rest of the trilogy.

The Worst Years of My Life: a brief review

The first time I heard of this book, it was during a commercial James Patterson made to promote its release (...has it ever weirded you out a little bit that he is always doing commercials to promote his new books? Just him sitting there talking dramatically about his books? No? It's just me? Okay.) I was really intrigued with reading it one day, and filed it away in the back of my mind. When Books a Million emailed me over July 4th weekend announcing that all four of Patterson's Middle School books and his first I Funny book were on a crazy sale, I caved and got them. In hindsight...they make libraries for things like these. But I figured if they're good, they'd be nice to have in the long term, right?

Middle School: The Worst Years of my Life is the first book in Patterson's Middle School series. Main character Rafe Khatchadorian starts sixth grade with less than great expectations. His mom is engaged to a man who sits on the couch all day drinking soda and watching TV while collecting unemployment checks, his little sister is going through an annoying phase known as the fourth grade, and he's having to start sixth grade in a new school with new teachers, new girls, new bullies, and new rules. It's actually the rules that become the main source of conflict when Rafe decides with his best friend to break each of the rules in the entire student handbook over the course of the year...while also dodging the bully that just won't leave him alone and trying to woo the pretty girl he has a crush on.

The plot of this book certainly isn't super original. Middle school is a real low point in most kids' lives, because of all the new rules and bullies and teachers and cute girls. Adolescent boys want to challenge those bullies, appear cool in front of the cute girls, be tough and rebellious towards the teachers, and break the rules when they can. And that's pretty much this book. But even though most of it is pretty predictable, there are several really surprising twists along the way. Obviously I won't spoil them, but the phrase "whaaaaat?" escaped me more than once. (At least twice, maybe three times.) It's also pretty funny. Not necessarily laugh out loud funny, but the cute kind of funny. The style the book is written isn't super original either; the pre-teen diary-style book featuring lots of drawings and doodles throughout is pretty popular right now. Diary of a Wimpy Kid was probably what started the little genre off, and series like Dork Diaries have also really taken off. I know I still have four more books left to go in this series, but I honestly much prefer the Wimpy Kid books to Patterson's. (I definitely laugh out loud to Wimpy Kid....I'm kind of lame, I know.)

I also feel like it needs to be said that a book encouraging awkward and unhappy boys trying to find their way in a new school by just systematically breaking all the rules in the code of conduct - while disrupting classes and publicly disrespecting teachers - might not be the best idea. And maybe I'm just biased because I have had my class disrupted and have been publicly disrespected by middle school boys...but hey. I'm just throwing it out there.

More of a Guideline

A couple months ago I started my own personal challenge of reading all the books I own that I haven't ever read. When I started the challenge, I had 91 books. I found a couple in various hiding places around the house, though, and also bought one at a yard sale, bringing my total to 93. But then today I was peer pressured into going to the Green Valley Book Fair (one of my favorite places in the entire world), and I picked up three books. Two I'd read and love, and one that's new. I've heard really great things about it for years, and it was $2.99. I know it's breaking my rule (I'm not allowed to buy any new books that I haven't read before I read all the books I already own that I've already read), but I decided to respond the same way as Captain Barbossa of the Black Pearl.

The code is really more like a guideline. And I can decide when I'm allowed to break it.

So yeah. 93 94 books to go.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: a brief review

It's with somewhat mixed emotions that I write this post. I literally just finished the last page of the book, and even though I'd seen the movie and knew how it was going to end, I'm obviously still deeply saddened. Saddened that such a time in human history ever occurred, and saddened that it is still happening now.

John Boyne's novel/fable The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is the story of nine-year-old Bruno, whose father is the Commandant in charge of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. Bruno doesn't know what goes on in the little town on the other side of the big fence, and he stares in curiosity at all the little people who wear matching striped pajamas every day. When he finally decides to get out of the house and go exploring one day, he finds another nine-year-old boy to be friends with...but this boy is on the other side of the mysterious fence. Thus begins an odd and secret friendship that lasts over a year as the boys continue to meet and talk while sitting at the fence line.

I said I had mixed emotions about this book. The topic is one we're all too familiar with as 21st century Americans, but it's told here from a slightly different perspective than we're used to and that adds a unique new effect. As if the topic itself isn't enough, the book's conclusion is just absolutely heartbreaking. But my confused emotions come from a state of frustration: the gaps in logic are quite large at times. Bruno would not have been nearly as clueless as he was in real life WWII-era Germany; the nine-year-old son of a Nazi Commandant would have definitely been involved with Hitler Youth and would have had Nazi propaganda instilled in him continuously. It also makes no sense that Bruno would be confused by the word "Auschwitz," replacing it with the phrase "Out-With"...he is a German-speaking child after all and the words "out" and "with" are English. The idea of a spot in the fence around Auschwitz having a hole big enough for an adolescent boy to fit under that is also never ever guarded or patrolled at any point over the course of an entire year is probably ridiculous. A house positioned directly next door to a concentration camp in which large amounts of humans were burned alive routinely would smell so strongly that no one in Bruno's family would have been able to stand it (or be confused at all about the purpose of the camp). Your typical nine-year-old child wouldn't be half as stupid as Bruno, either; he is probably the most annoyingly dense character I've read in a long time. But all of that aside, let's keep this in perspective. This is a work of fiction. A work of fiction that doesn't claim to be anything other than fiction. It's based on real events and a real place, yes. But it's fiction. And with fiction sometimes comes moments in which we need to suspend disbelief deeply rooted in hindsight and adult wisdom. Would I use this book as a lone tool to teach the Holocaust to a child? Nope. But I probably wouldn't mind using it as one of many tools, because it offers a unique voice not provided by most other books (it's also one heck of an opportunity for teaching inference and drawing conclusions).

In his author's note at the end of the book, John Boyne explains his choices:

"Throughout the writing and rewriting of the novel, I believed that the only respectful way for me to deal with this subject was through the eyes of a rather naive child who couldn't possibly understand the terrible things that were taking place around him. After all, only the victims and survivors can truly comprehend the awfulness of that time and place; the rest of us live on the other side of the fence, staring through from our own comfortable place, trying in our own clumsy ways to make sense of it all."

Honestly, I get it. Bruno is stupid and you want to strangle him to death throughout a lot of the book (either because he just will. not. get. it, or because he often whines about how bad he has it while watching his friend literally starve to death in front of him), but if Bruno wasn't quite so stupid the story wouldn't work. And honestly...are there areas in our personal interactions and/or areas in this world that we are as stupid as Bruno about? Are we the people whining about how our new house only has three floors when our old house had five while a dear friend sits across the table from us going through something that is literally killing them? Is it possible that we, as mature and intelligent adults, could be missing something right next door to us that's just as huge and heartbreaking? I hope not, but maybe Bruno can get us thinking anyway.

The DVD Storage Solution

Hubs and I both brought a lot of movies into our marriage. A lot. After moving all of my movies once in college and realizing how extremely heavy a box full of movies is, I decided to take them all out of their boxes and put them into a big CD case. It wasn't as cool as seeing them all on display but I got over that pretty quick because of how convenient it was. They took up so much less space, they could easily be transported all at once, and if someone is trying to pick out a movie you can just hand them the whole case. Because I didn't have any of the boxes to my movies anymore when we got married, it was the next logical step to take all of his movies out of their boxes and put them all into one big CD case together.

I think we decided that that one holds 300ish DVDs, give or take a couple. (It's one of those that has the full break in the middle and then starts over with a whole new sleeve.) It's big and super heavy and not all that pretty, but it was perfect for the first year or so of our marriage because A.) it held everything and B.) it was an old CD case hubs had owned for years and that had been buried in a closet somewhere, so it was free. We spent an entire night a couple weeks before we got married taking all of his movies out of their boxes and alphabetizing our entire combined collection before putting them in the case. But here's where the problems started soon after: the goal was to keep them alphabetized. So whenever a new movie came into the picture (not that often, honestly, but often enough to be incredibly annoying) I would move all the DVDs forward to create a new space for the new DVD so that it stayed in alphabetical order. In order to do this you literally have to take everything out that's past the spot where the new movie is going and then put them all back in. The first time you do that you think "Oh, that will be a fun and easy project to do while watching a movie with hubs tonight." The second time you do it you get so annoyed you want to just throw everything out and start over.  And when the time comes for you to do it when you have a ten week old puppy who is beyond hyperactive and whose only modes are peeing, climbing on you, or getting into something he shouldn't while you have all the movies you own spread out across the entire living room floor....you realize this situation you've placed yourself in is laughably unrealistic. So I just stopped alphabetizing. More time passed and we ran out of space in the big case, and added another little one too.

And that's how it stayed for over a year: one mostly alphabetized case with a random assortment at the end and an overflow case that wasn't organized in any fashion. It wasn't terrible and it wasn't like it wasn't working at all: our movies were all being stored somewhere and they were sort of in one place. I wasn't actively seeing a new system for them, but I wasn't opposed to stumbling across one either. And last week, I did just that.

I saw this guest post on the I Heart Organizing blog the end of last week, and loved the box she was using as a DVD storage system. I was intrigued so I clicked on the provided link to her own blog in which she detailed the actual process of the storage system. I loved the concept; it's clean and neat and visually appealing. Honestly it just kind of makes sense.

I bought the CD sleeves ($8 for a pack of 100 sleeves) and spent an evening pulling movies from the cases and putting them in the sleeves. Naturally, I ran out after 300 sleeves and needed about 50 more - I probably should have started with the purging process like the blogger I got the idea from - but I was able to get them all in sleeves after a second trip into town. We wanted to keep the movies in alphabetical order (grouping by genre gets way too confusing sometimes), so I used card stock as dividers between the movies and put simple letter stickers on the card stock to signify each group (A, B, etc.).

As for the actual storage container for all these movies...I had a little bit of a battle there. I wanted very badly to use something we already had, since cute little boxes and baskets tend to be obnoxiously expensive. I had a new basket from a sweet friend that I tried to use, but it wasn't big enough to hold them all. Then I tried some new white cloth bins that I got on clearance recently, but I would have needed two of them to hold all the movies, and they were about a half an inch too wide sitting next to each other to fit in the space in the entertainment center. So frustrating. As a last ditch effort, I browsed the whole of Target just to see what I could find, and after carrying around a couple strong possibilities for a while, I found the keepers. Short, extra long baskets specifically designed for CD storage. Bingo. I got two of them - paid for completely by a gift card I'd been toting around in my purse for almost a year - and took 'em home.

Because I used this project as something to keep me sane while fighting a zombie-like cold, I didn't take many pictures during the actual process. Here's the finished product though.

Thoughts, Tips, and Tricks:

As with nearly every DIY project like this, there isn't necessarily a completely perfect option. Even these baskets, which were specifically designed for something like this, have their own set of issues. Because they're baskets and not a hard and smooth box or crate, the envelopes can get hung up on the basket weave and cause some problems when flipping through. So far though, that's been a minor issue. The flip side of that, of course, is that baskets add more texture and character and a "pretty" factor than most boxes and such.

The biggest issue with this design of DVD storage, though, is the ability to flip through as you browse for a movie. It's super easy to find a specific movie because it's easy to keep all alphabetized, but if you don't know what you want to watch and you're just browsing for whatever jumps out at you, it can be a little tricky. If the movies are packed in there too tightly, there isn't a whole lot of room to look down in there and see the actual movies. The way I tried to fix this, though, was just by spreading them out quite a bit. Even though most of the movies would have fit into one basket, I spread them all out equally between the two, leaving a whole lot of empty space in each. By leaving extra space, the envelopes are able to be spread out and you can browse more freely. (Think record store browsing: you need space to be able to flip through them all rather than having them packed in as tight as you can.)

I'm planning on getting two more baskets to just put on that top shelf in the entertainment center. I know one day we will need more space and the chances of those exact same baskets still being for sale in three or five years is not likely. It will also be nice, though, to one day have a basket just for kids movies, so when our future children want to watch a movie they have a specific basket that is just theirs and they're not having to dig through our movies (let's please keep our kids from having to see the cover of Halloween for as long as possible, please).

Just like the original CD cases we used for so long, this new system keeps all our movies in one place, and can easily be handed to someone to browse through and look for a movie. It's still compact and easily moved, but it's also more attractive than the cases, and so much easier to keep organized and alphabetized. When we get a new movie now, all we need is a white envelope and we can just drop it in wherever it goes. No more fighting Captain while all 350 movies are scattered across the living room floor. And anything that keeps me from having to fight with Captain is golden in my book.