You ready for more organizing fun? I’ve got some new organizing tips for you today. I’ve been trying to take on one small organizing task each month. It seems like doing one small things is easier than trying to do a whole bunch of projects or one big project. It is nice to see little area after little area become a little more tidy and organized. I also love changing things up, so it has been fun to see little changes in these areas without it having taken me all day or all weekend.
This month, I took on organizing our movies. We use Netflix and Hulu a lot, but we still have and buy some movies. They used to be organized. The adults movies in one cabinet. The kids movies in another cabinet. But as things go, one of my kids decided to rearrange everything. She came up with her own system that no one but her understood. From there it was a downhill spiral. Once no one knew where to put things, the movies just got thrown in there. At the point the before pictures were taken for this organizing, I had already organized the games (don’t they look nice?). I tidied up the movies at that point so they don’t look too messy. They just were thrown in there and we had a hard time finding what we were looking for.
You ready to see how I organized the movies and saved a ton of space? Have I mentioned I love open space? Makes me smile to open a cabinet or closet and seem empty space. 🙂
Let’s look at where things started. As you can see, the games are still neatly organized even a month later. Yay! On the top shelf, you can see our movies and puzzles. The movies are fairly tidy but all jumbled up and there are more behind the row on the right. It was hard to find a movie or even know what we had. I also suspected I could save a bunch of space.
I think it is best to start any organizing project by emptying the space to be organized. I took out all of our movies. I left the puzzles and two games that reside on these shelves. I think I’m going to organize the puzzles a new way next month(or maybe just talk everyone into throwing them all away!).
Next up, we sorted through all the movies. There were some, especially for the kids, that we had outgrown or didn’t like anymore. When we were done, these were our three stacks of movies to organize.
If you would like to organized your movies the way I have, you will need:
- Binder (D ring binders work best with the DVD inserts)
- DVD Inserts
– I ordered mine from Amazon because I couldn’t find them locally. (affiliate link) - Printable dividers
After discarding and donating DVD’s, I organized them by various categories that work for us. I put them in one of two notebooks. One notebook contains the movies for the adults. The second notebook contains the Kid/Family movies.
When I was done, these 2, 1″ notebooks was all the space all those movies took up! LOVING that! ♥
The DVD sleeves
(affiliate link) that I used are able to hold DVD’s on both sides. I wanted to keep things a little easier for all of us to handle, so I only put movies on one side of the sleeve. It meant I used a lot more sleeves, but I think it will work better for us in the long run.
Since this was originally posted, I’ve created cute covers for the notebooks as well as dividers for inside the notebooks that indicate the different categories in our binders. You can see those and my organization update in this movie organization post as well.
For now, I placed the notebooks on the shelves above the cabinet which holds the games. I gained a bunch of space on this shelf by sending a set of books back to my cousin. Now there was plenty of room for the notebooks.
As you can see, I’ve got more room in the bookshelf as well as in the cabinet. LOVE that!
Our movies are well-organized and easy to locate. They’re even easier to locate now that I’ve labeled the folders and made the dividers.
Snag your movie organization printable dividers here and have fun getting everything organized.
I did this with my movies and music CDs last year! LOVE it!!!!
That is great! I’m loving it so far as well. It makes it so easy to find things and put them away as well.
I have been thinking a lot about doing this. We have an entire ottoman full of DVDs and now they are two layers deep, so it is really hard to find what we are looking for. What did you end up doing with the cases? Did you save them in case you want to get rid of the movies later, or just toss them?
I get ya…that sounds like it would get frustrating to find movies. Nice to have them out of sight, but frustrating. I threw away or recycled the cases. I don’t know what we will do when we are done with them and want to donate them. I guess put them in some kind of sleeve and donate them that way. I don’t have the space or the patience to save the cases for that someday. Lol!
Best Buy will recycle the cases. Check online first to make sure your store will take them, but I just took a huge garbage bag full of empty DVD cases and they took them no problem.
Love the tip! Thanks so much. Hopefully others will see this in the comments here and it will save the earth a bit. Wish I had known and now feel a little guilty. 🙁
I’ve been thinking of doing this but half the time the kids find the dvds based on the box. May have to reconsider, looks great!
Thanks! Yeah, that is something to consider. I will say that finding them in the sleeves works fine for us since most of the movies/tv shows are printed on the front. Still easy to find. Hope you find what works for you and your family.
The Container Store sells these AWESOME products called DVD Sox. Basically, they’re little envelopes that hold two discs as well as the paper cover of the DVD. They have a plastic container that is supposed to help make it easy to flip through them but I couldn’t get it to work, so I got some cute baskets from Target and have them in there. It’s great because you still have the cover and it’s easy to keep an 2-disc movies together. I highly recommend them!!
I put my movies into a cd case with a zipper, it holds alot of movies, bought it at Wal-Mart
I can’t handle it when people take the DVDs (or CDs) out of the case. It bothers me when anything is taken out of its original packaging and not replaced properly, when I was a kid I couldn’t even mess up the order my coloured pencils came in! I wish I could do this though, we have over 300 DVDs!! Maybe one day!
i would like to do this if I could find a way to keep the cover somehow
I would suggest that you give a look on Amazon or do a Google search. I think there are some sleeves that are sold that are designed to hold the cover insert as well as the DVD. Good luck! I hope you find something that you love. 🙂
These pages will eventually ruin your movies.
I love the idea of this and have tried it in the past.
However, my main issue was when you bought a movie, how do you keep it in alphabetical order? It was a pain to have to move the discs around every time we got a movie.
Yes, it does take some time to keep them organized. I have another post about how I organized mine into categories rather than alphabetically. It works great. https://realcreativerealorganized.com/2015/02/how-to-organize-movies-take-2.html
I have the same kind of folder for the DVDs, but I printed a photo of the cover of the DVD. This slips into the sleeve, then the DVD on top. We can easily see what DVD happens to be missing and where it should be stored. My OCD kicked in here and they have to be alphabetized, which means when we get a new DVD, they all have to be moved!
Love the CM photo albums!
I love all your organizing skills! I LOVE to organize, and I’m always looking for new ways to organize or situate something just a little better to fit our small home! Just had a question… what did you do with all your dvd cases? I could do this with our movies, but should I get rid of all the original cases? Doesnt really make sense to have to store them somewhere too?!
Would photo album pockets work..?
They might. You might take one and measure it to see if the pocket is the right size. My guess is that they are too small. Let us know what you find out.