In our quest to have a simpler, less-cluttered lifestyle, we realised we needed to do something about our DVD / BluRay collection. A few years ago, we put all our DVDs into fancy Slappa cases which held the DVDs along with their cover art. For a while, this solution was most satisfactory. The cases took up less room than all the separate DVDs in their original cases and we could flick through them to choose something to watch in a civilised way. i.e.on the sofa rather than craning our necks trying to find a DVD on a wall full of cases.
As our DVD collection grew, though, it became harder to keep the DVDs organised. Trying to find a particular film to watch always took too long as it was inevitably in the last case we looked through – by now we had 4 DVD cases and one large case designed for CDs that we use for TV boxsets etc. We couldn’t keep the cases alphabetised – as soon as we added to our collection, it had to be added to the back of the last case. Now the cases themselves are full – a new one will cost around £32 – plus these ‘space-saving’ solutions are taking up too much room in the lounge!
Not only were we using cases but the boxsets were filling up a storage pouf and two drawers in our side unit. We needed a new plan.
I found on one of the home organising blogs that I follow a solution which looked neat and easy to maintain. Using plastic cases and pretty baskets or boxes, a blog reader submitted her solution. I thought this would be a great way to save some space.
The main problem we have encountered executing this solution is that the Atlantic sleeves she bought in the US are not available in the UK at a reasonable price (in fact, I think they would have been too expensive even in the States for the size of our collection since 25 sleeves cost $14.99 from Amazon). All the sleeves we found that would accommodate the cover art worked out as pretty expensive and we didn’t want to be spending over £100 on plastic sleeves alone.
In the end, we made the decision that we would lose the cover art and rely on labels for the DVDs where the title was not clearly shown on the disc itself. We bought good quality CD-sized sleeves; I found some at Play.com but they are easily available everywhere. We bought some smart but cheap(ish) blue boxes in Ikea. In all, we spent £25.25 on 700 plastic sleeves – we initially ordered 500 sleeves but used all these up so I had another 200 delivered – I hope this is enough for the rest! We bought 6 boxes from Ikea totalling £53.94. We got some dividers from Staples (about £6 a pack which was far too expensive – I am sure you can get these much cheaper elsewhere).
All in all, it has still cost us around £90 but given that we have capability to store 700 discs that’s not too bad. And the space they take up is pretty small and they boxes fit perfectly in our wooden side unit. now we should be able to find DVDs quickly, put them back easily and keep them alphabetised. I just need to make some labels for the cases and finish the job!
This post is no. 18 of my April daily writing challenge.
Notes From My Day 
I am inspired. We store ours in folders but they’re a bit out of control and there is no order. I shall embark on a storage solution this week. Thanks for this post.
Glad to have been of service! I am so pleased with the result and now we have been back to Ikea for some more (correctly sized) boxes, I will be finishing this job off this week.