Organizing the Family Room (3) Home Families.com

The weekend is over. That means it is time for me to get back into organizing the family room. So far, we’ve conquered the books and magazine. Let’s get into the area that causes me the most trouble: the video tapes and DVDs.

Here is our organizing list so far:

Books
Magazines
Video tapes and DVDs
Cassettes, CDs and records
Games

Let’s get started!

Back a few years ago, we acquired quite a few VHS tapes. This is because everyone else was quickly switching their collections over to DVDs, and we still didn’t have a DVD player. Now we do, along with many of those old VHS tapes. We have more tapes then we could ever possibly watch, and even through we culled them down before our move, we still need to evaluate what we have and whether or not each movie had earned a place in our collection.

This is going to be tough for me.

My strategy here is to separate out the kids movies and the adult movies. I’ll attack each group separately. For the adult movies, I’ll first separate out the ones that we watch so often that they are on their last legs. These will be considered for an upgrade to DVD.

Next, I’ll go to the other extreme, targeting the ones that have never been watched. Chances are good that we never will get to them, since with our new home we can spend more time outdoors. Even if we do want to watch these movies, they are probably on cable TV anyway or can be checked out of the library. Less is more. We’ll pick out five or six of these and set them aside for a month. A good way to do this is to place a piece of masking tape on the boxes with an expiration date. If we do happen to view one and would like to see it again and again, the masking tape comes off, and it is added to the permanent collection or converted to a DVD version. If not, well, then out it goes. We’ll use this technique for any other movies we might have, too.

Upgrading favorite movies to DVD is wonderful, because the movies take up less space. As one clever reader pointed out, the DVDs can be stored in album, making organization especially easy. Just make sure to place an index in the front of the book to stay organized.

For motivation, I’ll post in the forums right here, concerning my progress. I’d love to hear your feedback and your encouragement! Wish me luck.

Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.

Organizing the Family Room (1)

Organizing the Family Room (2)

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