Have I mentioned that my place is small? I have no closets, none at all not in either of the two bedrooms or the bathroom, so I have to make due with what little space I can and that usually means things are every where. Well, I am working on remedying that so I thought I would pass along one thing I did that helped clear up a lot of my "piles" that were seeming to take over the living room: my movies.
First thing I should explain...I do not have cable. Out here where I am at, antennas do not pick up anything so other than movies we do not have any other kind of television (yes we have TV's, but watch movies only). So I have about 768 movies. Ok, so that is really only an about number because I have a few more I need to add to my system, but it is pretty close.
This can be done in a day, depending on how many movies you have, but it is less tedious if you break it up. First thing I did was to get a bunch of these:
These, I believe, were originally sold for CD's, but hey DVD's and Blue Ray's are the same size so I made good use of them. Each of the boxes hold 80 disks. I think I have 9 boxes/bins right now total, though the last one is not completely full....yet. Each of the boxes comes with 40 sleeves, and each sleeve holds 2 disks (one on each side, just in case you were having a blond moment like I did when I first got them). The sleeves are also numbered and have a little stick along the top where you can label them. Here is a picture to make that a bit easier to understand.
Now, I am not so OCD that I felt all the movies had to be in alphabetical order (yes, I really did but I also knew that when I got more movies I wasn't redoing it 20 million times, so give me some credit lol). I did try to make sure series movies were together when possible (I didn't always buy them together so sometimes this didn't work). For example, I have Transformers 1, 2, & 3, so these movies are right behind one another in my boxes. There are also times when I have duplicate movies, sometimes because it came with a set of other movies (I love those multiple movies in a box) or sometimes it was because I just couldn't remember if I had it, or I was replacing a disk I thought was too scratched to play. These also received a new bin/box number and a slot so they may be on my list twice. The movies that were multiples on one disk, I would list the movie name and the same bin/box number for the number of movies on that particular disk.
Here is what I did.
I started out by taking a group of movies cases off the shelf and putting them in the sleeves. As I filled the sleeves, I also wrote the movie names on the tags of the sleeves. Some of my movies have more than one on a disk (as you can see in my picture above) so I would write the name of the first movie and then + however many more was on there. After I had so many of these done (usually I did a box at a time), then I would go back through the box and write down all of the movies in that box and list the number they were at in that particular box. Once I had all of the boxes done, I then went to my computer. Keep in mind that this is an ongoing thing, I did not do all 700 movies at one time. I started it almost 2 years ago and every so often, as I get more movies, I go back and add them to the boxes and update my list. I usually wait until I have about 20 or so movies to add so I have updated the list 2 or 3 times since I started it in March of 2013, my latest update was done just after Christmas 2014. I have also put a group in the cases, written them down, then put the list aside (somewhere I wouldn't lose it) and then updated my list the next time I was on my computer...yes I said computer....keep reading that part is coming up next.
Back to the subject at hand....I started up an excel file. Here are the first page and last page of my file (picture of the computer screen so please forgive the quality).
I do realize that my excel sheet says bin and my "bins" are actually labeled with a box number...so sue me...or consider it a blonde moment again. I made the labels for the bins when I did the last update because the little pieces of paper I had stuck inside the label area on the bin itself had gone missing on the majority of the bins (actually they were only missing on the ones my daughter could reach...hmmm think she may be the missing label culprit).
Anyway, back to the matter at hand. I wanted to keep it simple, and to fit nicely on a single piece of paper width wise, so I used three columns. I checked it once I started, using print preview, to make sure it would fit on one piece because it didn't originally, then adjusted my column width accordingly. The last time I updated the listed, I added a line at the bottom with the date I updated it. This served two purposes, letting me know when I updated it and making it possible with a glance to see that I had the most up to date movie list when I printed it later. Once I had all the movies listed, I highlighted the three columns and sorted it in alphabetical order (ok, so I am compulsive to a point, but it makes it easier to find a movie later).
I printed it out on purple paper, mainly because it was what I had and to make it stand out from the typical white paper sitting around the house for craft or printing purposes. Now, take a look at that first picture again of the box and realize that there are 80 disks inside....can you imagine how much space the same number of cases took up...yep the reason for the decluttering...it wasn't the invasion of the body snatchers or invasion of the blob...it was invasion of the movie cases lol
I stapled the pages together and I keep it near the boxes. Like I said, it can be done in a day, depending on the number of movies you have, but I did mine over time and just reprinted the list when I added more movies. If you would love to do this, live close by, but don't have time, let me know I would be happy to come over and organize your movies for you....but I do charge lol
I am sure you could only imagine what it would be like to have that many movie cases all over the place though so it was very much worth it to me. I am working one area at a time to declutter and release excess objects from the house...slow process but I will update you on what I do as I go (if the blond in me remembers that is)..
What is your decluttering tip? Comment below.
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