If you own and collect any movies you know they do take up space. If you have quite a few, like me, you know the space you store your movies will diminish sooner or later. I had a huge bookcase with five shelves. It no longer can house my movies because there just isn’t enough room anymore.
I don’t have a huge collection, but I do have over 200 movies (and counting). When you store movies in their original boxes it all adds up, especially if you own collector sets. I’m talking collection sets such has The Nightmare on Elm Street box collection (link)- big and bulky folks!
Since I love movies and like to watch one or two at least every week, and I tend to purchase one movie each month. Because of this I’ve now hit a road block: no more space for any movies. Even if I stack them on top of each other it just causes more headaches because then there is no rhyme or reason to anything. And let’s just say I’m the type of guy who doesn’t do disorganized!
I started out putting my DVDs in alphabetical order but soon realized this was not ideal. When I needed to add a DVD/Blu-Ray I would have to shift an entire row of movies to fit the one movie. What a pain!
This was the impetus for needing a better storage solution for my movies. Space is limited and I need a system where I can find a DVD in less than one minute.
The Solution
You will need the following items (items are linked to the product page). Once again, I’ve purchased my supplies at Staples because it’s my favorite office supply store. Seriously, if Staples were to close tomorrow, I would drop dead!
The first thing I did was take the labels and print out the number of slots I had in the binder. The Targus holds 256 disks so using the labels I printed 1-256. I used my printer so that it all looked uniform, but feel free to handwrite your numbers. Next, stick your labels where you want on each open slot. I numbered mine going across the first two slots, then moving down to the other two slots. My labels are in the lower left corner (see diagram and photo below).
Once you have numbered all of the slots in the binder, you are ready to place you movies in the binder. There is no need to put them in any specific order because once you have put them in the binder, there is one more step to win this battle!
Open up Microsoft Excel or the database software you use. Create a new spreadsheet and the first two columns should be created labelled “Title” and “Location”. Then add columns for information you want to add. This could be genere, the year the movie came out, etc.
(click image above for larger view)
I’m still tweaking my spreadsheet, but right now I have four columns: Title, Location, Type of Disc, Upgrade and Loaned To.
The first two columns are obvious. The one thing I did do for location was add a “1″. This is so that I know that it’s located in binder one. I’m almost ready for a second a binder, and I will mark the binder itself later when it’s time for the next one.
The “Type of Disc” column indicates if it’s a DVD or a Blu-ray movie. Next to that is the “Upgrade” column. Here I have marked which DVDs I want to upgrade to Blu-ray at a later time.
The last column for me is the “Loaned To” column. Here I can type out who I let borrow a DVD and the date I gave it to them. This way I have a record and if they seem to “forget” I can get it back. Here’s a hint. Give the DVD in a plain DVD sleeve. Don’t give them the entire DVD/Blu-ray in the original package. Print a label that reads: “This DVD/Blu-ray belongs to _________” and stick it on the back-side of the sleeve. This way the person who borrowed the disc remembers as well.
FREE DOWNLOAD
If you decided you want to organize your movies this way you can click here to download the spreadsheet that I’ve created to and customize the columns to what you need! Saving you even more time.
Once you have all your information completed in the spreadsheet it’s easy to find the movie you are looking for. On a Mac, press Command+F, and on Windows press Ctrl+F to search. Type in the movie you are looking for in the search box that comes up and hit “Search”. The movie you are looking for will come up with the information on where to find it in your binder. EASY!
Kokopelli Warriors, victory is ours! We are saving space and time. I did keep the original packaging for my movies though. This is so that if I do upgrade a DVD I have the packaging and can sell it for more of a profit.
Another thing I got out of this? An entire bookshelf to put in my utility room to store my stockpile.
