Managing the Movie Madness

We love movies.

Oh, yes. Many, many movies.

And because of this, our DVD/BluRay collection has grown fairly extensive. We've whittled it down to our favorites a few times now, but it's still enough to fill a six-foot bookshelf. Plus some.

With so many movies, it was often difficult to find the one we were looking for. Pride and Prejudice was mashed together with Peter Pan and Independence Day. Eragon with Just Like Heaven and The DaVinci Code  The chaos drove me nuts. Movie cases lay scattered across the floor, the shelves looked worse than a store display after the Black Friday crowds were through. If I had a hankering to watch Princess Bride, I'd have to dig through half our collection only to find an empty case.

I tried lining the movies up on the shelf alphabetically. Ha! That lasted all of two minutes.

I tried lining them up according to genre. Better, but not good enough.

Then one day, as I wandering the container aisle in Walmart, I stumbled upon these little beauties and fell in love. Justifying the cost as necessary to maintain my sanity, I grabbed half a dozen and brought them home.

I saw colorful bins like this at Walmart this week for $1 each.

The movies fit perfectly.

More than perfectly, since the crates stacked so precisely. Vertical storage was now an option in my limited space!

I was addicted. I needed more.

Every time I went to the store, I snagged a few more crates. At just over a dollar each at the time, it wasn't too much of a stretch on my budget. And seeing my lovely little crates gave me a giddy high every time I passed by.

The organizational high fueled my madness. Labels. I needed labels! So I spent more time than I really had and created labels for each genre - complete with appropriate font.

Comedy!

Drama!

Sci-Fi/Fantasy!

Family!

Suspense/Thriller!

Action/Adventure!

It still wasn't enough and I went too far. Oh, yes. There is such a thing as too organized and I had passed that signpost miles back.

Obsessed, I poured hours into creating a printed guide of where to find each movie, which was assigned a specific crate. Not only that, but I listed how long the movie was, who starred in it, and when it came out. I scoured the internet to get my answers as my house slowly deteriorated into a hoarder's nightmare.

When I finally emerged from my organizational walking coma, my family reintroduced themselves and we settled in to watch a movie. I sank into the couch, sated and completely satisfied.

Until we bought another movie.

Fast forward a few years and more than a few messy meltdowns...

While I'm still project-obsessive, I've relaxed my standards to a reasonable and acceptable level. We still have those crates and labels, but the rarely used guide has been put to rest. It's enough to know all family-friendly movies and games are on the bottom three shelves and the rest are out of the reach of curious littles. When I'm longing for a sappy love story, I pull out the Drama crates one by one until I find the one I'm looking for. Or when it's time for a Star Wars or Harry Potter marathon, they're easily found in one of the Sci-Fi/Fantasy crates.

Dishpan for holding game controllers.

We still have movie and game cases littering the top of our TV console or scattered underfoot, but even my youngest is able to put them away correctly. Especially when bribed with a cookie. (He's so easy to manipulate, I mean, please that way.)

And that's enough for me.