whotony

Holy Wow!

Moviefan02

Hello all, I'm glad I'm not the only one who has had trouble organizing a large collection.

Introduction:
I have a movie library that consists of over 10,000 titles spanning different formats and genres. I converted a spare bedroom for my "library." I have shelves on the walls, all around the room-that only holds about half of them. I started piling movies up in random places throughout my apartment until I decided to build 3 large shelves to place in the middle of the room. It's cramped but I finally have a little room to continue adding, even though I don't buy much anymore.

It's been hard recently to get an accurate count as I no longer have a list for them all. I used to keep an Excel spreadsheet but I lost it in a hard drive crash (I didn't have a backup).

Before anyone asks why I would want such a large collection; I've always been fond of movies, but I grew up in a low-middle income household so I never had the opportunity to go to the theaters much and only rented once or twice a month. Because of the way I was brought up, I've always been a bargain hunter - what started out as a $5 impulse buy here and there snowballed into going to Big Lots on a weekly basis for $3 DVDs or Goodwill for 25¢ VHS tapes. Obviously, I'm not scared of buying used, especially when well-known video chain stores went out of business back in 2010. I picked up THOUSANDS of titles from those sales for really cheap. I watch at least one movie a night, and loan movies to close friends and family upon request. I'm coming close to watching every movie in my collection at least once, only 200 left that I haven't seen yet. My motto is if you can afford it and you're not hurting anyone especially yourself, continue doing what you're doing!

Current Organization:
I've tried organizing my collection alphabetically, now I'm trying out sections:
DVD (~9,500 titles)
- ACTION Alphabetized (~2,500 titles)
- DRAMA Alphabetized (~1,500 titles)
- COMEDY Alphabetized (~2,500 titles)
- HORROR Alphabetized (~3,000 titles)
VHS (dwindled down to ~450 titles)
- STILL ALPHABETICAL
BLU-RAY (only 62 titles so far)
- STILL ALPHABETICAL

I've had the room set up this way for the past 6 months, and so far it's aimed to be the most successful organization system I've tried.

jimmaxmed

Hey Moviefan02, you're not going to get any argument from me about your collection OR your choice of organizing them in a spare bedroom. I mirror many of the things you wrote including the use of an extra room complete with shelves covering the walls. I'm going to eventually have 6 individual shelf units placed back to back to form 3 freestanding units to occupy the center of the room much like any library or video store would have. Although right now I have everything just alphabetized from A-Z, I would like to break it down into genres once I get everything in place, and all piles put on shelves. So, kudos to you and your library.

Moviefan02

Thanks. I used to prefer keeping mine alphabetized until I came to realize how much of a PITA it is to add new titles to it. Moving every shelf down just to add a title to the A's or B's... Plus if I decide I'm only in the mood for an action movie or a horror flick, I can walk into my library and go straight to said section. It also helps me watch something more random rather than choosing a movie just because I know the title off hand(many times it's something I've seen a thousand times). I'm hoping to have some pictures taken of the library, I have a hard time capturing the whole room so I may have to shoot a video or something.

jimmaxmed

Amen to ALL that brother.

bobert3

I would love to see your collection!

Pizza

Trevor, if you got the funds you can rent a getaway apartment and store all your stuff there.

As I said before, i went with slim CD jewel cases and have been very, very happy with that decision. It's hard at first throwing out the cases but it gets easier the more you do it and actually feels liberating. DVD cases are space hogs.

I've done the binder thing and it really does compress the collection. Still, binders are hard on DVDs, especially flippers which can get scratched up. If you go with binders make sure that a DVD fits comfortably in the sleeve as they are thicker than CDs. I quickly gave up on binders and tried and permanently switched to slim CD jewel cases.

I would probably do a mix. Look through your collections and all the "lesser" titles should immediately go into binders or given away if you prefer. Keep the primo titles in their original cases.

Your marriage is more important then a DVD case or 10,000 of them.

Moviefan02

The idea of using CD cases could not work with my OCD. I wouldn't have any problem trashing the cases but cutting up or trashing the original artwork would disturb me too much.

One question, how do you find anything specific? Do you keep a list of all the titles in your collection and what shelf they're on or are they alphabetized and you just flip through all of a particular letter until you find the title in question?

@bobert3: I guarantee I'll have pictures or a video of my collection in due time(in the process of replacing my camera).

Pizza

broken down in genres and alphabetized. I have no problems quickly finding a disc. Probably quicker than if they were still in their original cases.

Houstondon

I should have known when I had the shelves built in the game room that they wouldn't be enough (12' high, two deep on titles, across a very large wall) but I'm hoping for some tips by the more organized out there. Between mainstream and porn, I have a pretty sizable collection of movies. I'm still working on adding my CD's to my Collectorz database but I've managed to keep up with the movies after spending a lot of time.

I currently have all my titles on shelves in their cases. Using slim lines would help delay the problem but I want to keep my library as I watch a lot of movies and every once in awhile, having titles comes in handy (a recent lawsuit against John Stagliano regarding his Stretch Class series brought up questions of what he did or didn't do, having access to the movies dispelled the lies easily). I'm leaning toward putting the discs in those spindle cases that hold 100 discs and then placing the covers in binders. With the amount of space I have, I could consolidate all the movies to the shelves, maybe even get my CD's there, if not the games too.

At very least, going this way with the porn would save me tons of space, over 12k titles and the spindles are cheap when bought in bulk, I just haven't found any binders I really like to display the covers easily and will allow me to cheaply add new titles without rearranging things all the time. Beside the usual, get rid of stuff suggestions, have any of you other collectors had success with mass storage?

Nathanmann

A simple spreadsheet in chronological order listing everything I've ordered/bought.
My entire collection of 3000+ titles is within reach of where I am sitting right now in front of this computer without my having to get up or move my chair.

jimmaxmed

What is this "Stretch Class series" you mentioned ???

Houstondon

It's a series of adult movies where no sex takes place, the director just has the ladies do certain things to satisfy his fetish. Any more graphic than that, you'll have to DM or email me.

LJG765

It sounds like you want a more permanent solution, but what I have done and it's eased the pressure a lot, is buy keep cases that can hold 4 discs (and they have ones that can hold at least 10). I've combined a lot of my series and the one I like the most is the same width as a single keep case, so converting, I can get 4 movies in the space of 1. I kept fancy cases and what not, but overall, I had a lot of cheap movies that I enjoyed but didn't need to keep the case for it. Plus, the case I bought has a plastic cover on the outside, so I was able to keep the artwork there. I get them on Amazon and if you want me to, I can look which one I buy up for you, just let me know.

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

I'm at 16k titles now and while I have a ton of shelves, I also use large capacity binders. I'm up to #32 now.

Trevor

MP, what binders do you use? And what do you do with the disc art and inserts?

The Man with the Golden Doujinshi

These are the binders I've been using lately and I've liked them. http://www.amazon.com/Targus-TDP007U...targus+dvd+256
The only issue I ever have with them is sometimes one of the middle pages will get caught in the zipper when I'm flipping through it.

My theater room's walls go up for a couple feet and then angle inward, which means there's some decent space between the shelves and the wall that I can store stuff like inserts and disc art, boxes of VHS movies, and boxes of old game systems and their games.

On one of the sides, I can scare my kids because at the other end of one of these tunnels, there's a 1 foot tall door in the wall with a little doorknob. We were going through some tapes this morning and my oldest was asking why there's a little door with a doorknob?

"It's so they can open and close the door", I replied.

True story is that the guy that built the house had a cat and his wife was slightly allergic to it, so he made some accommodations so it could go around the house and somewhat being able to avoid her. If you go through that doorway, you'll go through the walls and find the other doorway in the closet of the master bedroom on the second floor. From there, if you were that cat, you could then go into the master bathroom, through the pet door of the screen and then walk down a ramp that connected down to the fence in the backyard.

sdrobert

I know this is a very late reply to this post, but i have to as Dick Laurent, where did you get your shelves. I have a growing collection that i would like to tame. I have looked everywhere and have not found the "right" shelving unit. Looking through these posts for ideas, I ran across yours and they are just what i am looking for. Any guidance or suggestions would be greatly apprecaited!

Trevor

I'm doing something now that'll make a lot of us cringe, and would have made me cringe not that long ago. While I still shelve and "preserve the packaging" of a good chunk of my collection, the bulk of my DVDs and BDs are slowly migrating into binders.

My scary movies are going into these binders pictured below. To fit the sleeve art, they have to be folded, but folding in half won't work, as the sleeves are just wide enough for one side. Initially, I was folding in one or both sides trying to avoid affecting the art or words, then folding in half. But this process created three folds in the sleeve art. So now, I'm actually cutting them in half, but at a fold so it doesn't really affect the art. I'm not describing it well, but the pic below should show it.

Viper187

ewwww. I merge things into Versapak cases. I've got a couple full of Van Damme movies, couple for Steven Seagal, etc. Saves me space. I'd never use binders. Not the least bit convenient, and some can scratch/scuff discs over time. I've got a bunch of containers in the closet form all the goofy packaging I replace. The only thing in my 7+ Sauder #2650 media cabinets are Versapak and Viva Elite type cases. I need another cabinet, but I hate the idea of spending $125. I used to get them for $80 when Boscov's stocked them. I have them all along one wall double stacked.

Old pic. The black shelves are full now. Hence my need for an 8th cabinet.

Travis McClain

Ack! I dunno how feasible it would be for you, but I'd be more inclined to get a small filing cabinet and store the case inserts flat in a folder. You could either make a scan or some other stand-in page for the binder.

slop101

Well, 4 years later, and I don't regret it at all - in fact, I've clean forgotten what I've tossed, mostly since I still held on to so much better stuff. Also, it made room for the shit I've bought in the last 4 years, which hasn't been a lot, but I might want to do further pruning some time in the next year or so.

Trevor

No reason to not cut them up to make them fit. I'm never going to sell anything, much more likely to just throw all inserts and packaging away actually.

But mostly, I have to use these binders because I bought them, and need to consolidate/make space. I have enough of these type to fit about 1500 discs, so it should fit my horror collection with room for moderate future growth.

milo bloom

I tried the binders for a while but I couldn't stand not seeing my collection on the shelf. Unfortunately I did cut up a few of the artworks so I've got a handful still in the binder but I've put most of the rest back in cases.

One thing I will do is combine series into multi disc cases. If studios can do it, so can I.

Greg MacGuffin

I invested in two cases from DiscScox, one for my Blus and one for my DVDs. I keep my box sets, TV series, and Criterions still on a shelf, but everything else goes in a sleeve and is then filed in the chest. I had a slight moment of hesitation at first, but felt a huge weight lift off of me literally after putting the first disc in a sleeve. My collection was growing and growing, despite my efforts to winnow it down, but DiscSox has solved a lot of my problems. Highly recommend them. Their stuff is pricey, but worth it, and it looks great and is easy to use.

http://mmdesign.com/cd-dvd-blu-ray-storage.php