DVD Organization FINALLY Done!

Front of Armoire

Okay, so what started out early Wednesday morning as what I thought would be an easy fix to a storage solution, ended up being quite a project.  I learned two things...  One is that I'm somewhat of  perfectionist and two is that I'm not an artist....  LOL

So the story is that I looked up each and every movie, yes, nearly 300 of them, on Netflix to see what Genre they fall into.  Then I alphabetized the movies within each genre.   Cut the slips to fit behind every disc and filed them into the CD binder.  

DVDs over the cut-up movie covers

The good thing is that my kitchen table is no longer covered in DVDs as the project is completed.  I even was able to get rid of all of these stinking DVD covers... YES I DID!!!  I advertised them "free" on Craig's List and they were gone a few hours later!  Yeah... I have my table back now!  

Just look at all those bad boys spread out on the table.   Honestly I could care less if I ever see another DVD or Blu-Ray for the rest of my life!   Thank goodness for Netflix... That's all I have to say. 

So here's all of the DVD cases empty on the table and the two binders full of movies:

The bad thing is that I thought I could be creative and "fancy up" the CD binder.  After all, I did get a new Silhouette SD for Christmas.  Mistake number one was thinking I was creative and mistake number two was actually trying to make it work.  I downloaded a film strip and printed it off using my Silhouette. I then taped it on to the spine of one of the binders and realized that I needed the other part as a stencil.  The bad news was that part was all ripped to shreds.  SOOOO  I thought I would tape off the entire spine and just paint / stencil it white.  It sounds easy enough.  It was easy enough, but now I know why I never fell victim to the 1990's stenciling of the walls....   I'm horrible at it.  When I pulled that stencil off, there were paint globs everywhere.  It just looked awful.  So thinking that the binder itself is black and I have black craft paint, I'll just cover over the areas that got a little out of control.  Well, all that did was add a little grey into the mess.  So I took a hair dryer to the paint to speed up the drying process..  Is that a fire hazard?  Anyway, I came back out and took a black Sharpie to cover the grey.  The more I do the worse it looks, so I just quit.  It looks like my toddler decorated the spine of the DVD holder....   Well, the good news is that it's on the one that holds his movies, so I guess that works good....  LOL    I'll just have to buy another binder eventually and hide or um burn that one.

So one project is over.  It took way too long, but I'm glad it's done.  The whole reason I did it was to free up room in the armoire to put in VHS movies that are stored in an old entertainment center.  The entertainmet center is stored in what is now the guest room, but will become my son's big-boy room.   He needs to move out of the nursery so we can get it ready for "Baby Sister".   

Anyway, that being said, when I opened the door of the armoire and what was once filled with DVDs is now filled with VHS tapes.  So you really can't tell a difference between the before and after shots.  The good thing is that we don't even have a VCR hooked up so moving the VHS tapes around to watch a movie is not going to be happening.  The DVD's are all on the second shelf!  WOO HOO!!! 

Well, I'm out.  

Before

After

Saving Money by Organizing

Once again Thrifty Decor Chick came up with an awesome idea for me to steal... I, too, have a toddler and each time we want to watch a movie that's kid-friendly, then we have to pull out a million DVDs to find the G rated ones. Usually we end up watching the same ones over and over to avoid having to pull out all the movies.

We had our movies stored in stacks and stacks in an antique armoire handed down to me. I love the armoire and refuse to part with it. I thought it would make the perfect DVD storage area, but I didn't think about how many DVDs we actually have. There's just no organization to the cabinet and no easy way to find what we're looking for.

I ran across this blog post by Sarah over at Thrifty Decor Chick. She put the DVDs in a CD case to help cut down on the space. So my wheels got to thinking and I decided to steal her idea. I mean her exact idea.

I started out with an armoire full of movies. This picture was taken AFTER I removed the G rated and PG rated movies out it!

After I pulled out all the G and PG rated movies, I started out alphabetizing the DVDs. Then I put the DVD in each sleeve and piled the cases on the table in order. That altogether took me about an hour to do. This morning I got my coffee and pulled out my handy-dandy Friskars cutter that I bought four years ago to hand-make my wedding invitations. I thought I would never use the contraption after the wedding, but honestly, I keep it handy at all times. I LOVE this cutter. It's so useful. Once again, it came in handy this morning to cut the movie covers to size. I cut each one 4 1/2" by 4 1/2" to fit into the sleeve with the DVD. I guess my OCD took over because I had to make sure that as much of the original cover was saved as possible.

I love the fact that once you remove the DVD to watch it, the cover insert shows where the movie belongs. That way you know if you're missing any movies... Which, after this project, I hope will no longer be an issue.

So I went from a 28" stack 7 1/2" wide to a CD binder that takes up less storage space. Here's the difference...

Now, let's put this into dollar and cents. How much did this little organization project cost me? Let's first see what it saved me....

So I called a local storage unit place and had a quote provided for a 5' x 5' area and a 15'x20' area climate controlled. The price ranged from $51 a month to $256 a month. So we can assume an average cost of $153.50 per month for an average square footage amount of 162.5. That's $1.06 a square foot on average for storage.

Have a I put you to sleep yet??? Stay with me....

So, my stack was 28" high and 7 1/2" wide. That means it was taking up roughly 1.46 square feet. Now let's multiply that by $1.06 per month, and I'm figuring on $18.52 storage cost for a year. So for a little more than what I would pay in yearly storage cost for the movies, I have invested in the CD binder. Now hold on, there's still room for another 136 movies!!! WOOT WOOT

So let's go back to the first picture I posted.... See all of those movies still in stacks. Yeah, that's what I still have left to do... Uggg. I can't wait for this project to be over! Wish me luck. It'll be worth it in the long run. Our house is growing by two feet (we're expecting baby #2, but it shrinks with clutter and STUFF more and more each day..... I desperately need this extra space.