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.