Aloha Friday: Organizing Your DVDs
As mentioned in last week’s Aloha Friday, I’ve been thinking about cutting the cable cord. As part of my thinking, I was considering our DVD collection. Right now, our system is to pile our 100 or so DVDs on shelves in our entertainment center. This might seem like a fine system, but there are only two shelves for the DVDs. In addition, the shelves are behind glass doors that frequently get blocked by kids’ toys. This means that it is difficult to read the titles of the DVDs and it is hard to get to the DVDs themselves.
I first looked into a system to rip our DVDs to our desktop computer and then stream those movies to our living room television, but that proved too tricky. The technology is out there, but it didn’t seem proven enough for me or required too much of a monetary investment. Then I looked at similar systems, but ones that would host our videos in a set top box. These too, exist, but didn’t have good enough reviews to make me feel comfortable in spending the hundreds of dollars to set it up.
I began to think that I was – as usual – trying to cobble together a high-tech solution when a more inexpensive, low-tech solution. So I looked at some shelves, but the sturdy ones were too big for our small living room and the ones that would fit into our living room would be too flimsy around the boys. My current plan is to simply catalog and categorize our movies and print out a list. Then we can look at the list and know exactly what there is to watch.
My Aloha Friday question is: How do you organize your DVD collection so that you know what you have and can quickly select a title to watch?
Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.
Aloha #8
We have two ways of organizing. One: Everything is in DVD folders.. So that all we have to do is flip through and they are all organized according to type of movie lol (thanks to my husband) Second: We have a Disc organizer. It’s a black cylinder.. I think I bought it from HSN. You write all the DVD movies on the pull out tray..beside a number. Then click the number button and out pops your movie lol 🙂 It’s cool. They are about 20 dollars for one and they hold 80 movies.
Our tv is in a built in wall unit with shelves on the side where we keep our cd’s, dvd’s etc.
.-= Vicki´s last blog ..Aloha Friday =-.
Am easy question, I like that. 🙂 We have about 5 DVDs, so organising them to see what we have is not an issue.
.-= Jennifer´s last blog ..Permission Slips: A Book Review =-.
I wish I had a way to organize…
We used to, but not anymore..
Total Chaos..
We have two different units for dvd’s. One is kid’s movies & one deals w/ more adult themes. All alphabetical.
Right now Hubby’s trying to get us down to only one shelving unit since we belong to Netflix. That helps too!
Last year we put in a library. I have a DVD section. It is by type of Movie, Children, Humor, Drama and education.
.-= AuntieE´s last blog ..Aloha Friday – How high will you go? =-.
My husband is the one who has all of ours organized – he’s got them all in a database to keep track of what we own. They’re not terribly organized in reality though – we have shelves downstairs in the basement but everything’s kind of a mess at the moment.
.-= Deb – Mom of 3 Girls´s last blog ..Aloha Friday #103 =-.
We don’t have a huge collection of DVDs so they just sit on a shelf. Some on a shelf upstairs and some downstairs. I’m terribly disorganized.
.-= Clara´s last blog ..Aloha Friday =-.
You’re kidding, right? With six kids organizing the DVD’s is not only impossible, it’s impractical. I’m lucky if they stay int he proper cabinet.
Our DVD’s are on a shelf, with the kid friendliest at the front.
.-= Laufa´s last blog ..Crafty Spin =-.
I learned long ago with those stupid VHS tapes, I throw the cases away (unless there is an important reason to save them) and I put my DVDs into cases.
Have a great day.
http://iamharriet.blogspot.com/2009/10/and-discussion-continuessahm-vs-worming.html
.-= Harriet´s last blog ..I Challenge You to Leave 1000 Comments!!!!!!! =-.
I don’t really have an organization system. We have a shelf for kids movies and a shelf for our movies. That’s pretty much it. I’m really not into organizing if I can help it. lol
.-= Shelly´s last blog ..Aloha Friday: Are you Ready for Some Football? =-.
We put them into those DVD folders/books. We have one for the kids’ DVDs (although it’s full…time to either cull or get another book for the kids.
We put them all in in alphabetical order, which only marginally worked because when we get a new one, we can’t rearrange them all to get it in place (I have a friend who actually does this, she rearranges, but she doesn’t have children.)
We also tried, at the same time, to implement what seemed like a good system. We numbered every sleeve in the books and started typing all the movies into a spreadsheet. We noted which number sleeve went with each movie, the theory being that we wouldn’t have to worry about alphabetical organization with later acquisitions, it would just be by number. This would be useful if we had kept up with it, I suppose!!!! LOL.
Basically we just flip through the books and hope for the best.
.-= phyllis´s last blog ..Book Review: Because I Said So =-.
Ours are alphabetized and on five foot high dvd cases. We have thousands of dvds.
.-= blueviolet´s last blog ..Aloha Friday – Can you fake it? =-.
They are on a book shelf like books. I try not to have too many though.
.-= Pamela M. Kramer @A Renaissance Woman´s last blog ..Freebie Friday – Week 28 =-.
At the moment they are all in boxes that we have to pick through to find one we want to watch. Until the house is finished this will be what we have to do.
.-= Baba´s last blog ..Welcome to FeedBurner =-.
we don’t have that too much of a DVD collection…but we some few which at the box placed in the book case…
.-= pinaymama´s last blog ..Aloha Friday: Apology Accepted or Not? =-.
In baskets within my tv cabinet. I have one that has all Hawaii DVD and the other for children’s DVD for the grandkids whenever they come over.
.-= East Coast Wahine´s last blog ..Hawaiian Culture Weekend =-.
I used to have them sorted by genre but then the kids got into them. So they are mixed up and that is a pain because I easily have over 700 dvds. Right now I have my movies in one place and all the kids movies on a seperate dvd stand.
For now we have our DVDs in a little cupboard. I think you should do like my dh does and creat a spreadsheet with all your titles and year of movies etc so you can always tell what you have or get a bitter display cabinet! 🙂
.-= JamericanSpice´s last blog ..I did a wonderful thing 🙂 =-.
@JamericanSpice ,
I’ve actually just completed a quick project along those lines. I used a freeware program called EMDB to quickly input all of the DVD titles. Next, I’ll make a list of the ones for NHL and JSL and print those out (perhaps with cover art). This way, they can see just what movies they can watch. I plan on fully reviewing EMDB at some point, but right now I can definitely recommend it.