This idea was a truly redefining “baskets!” moment for our household. We were running out of precious bookshelf space, so we decided to recycle all our DVD cases — take every disc, put them in disc sleeves, and store them in a lovely media basket.
The sleeves we got are different colors, so you could organize using the different colors, but we just sorted alphabetically by title.
Now we have all our paperbacks stored nicely in our entertainment center, and our entire movie collection fits on our tiny endtable.
This could also work for video games, CD collections, any discs that are eating up precious storage space.
We keep a lot of older DVDs in CD folders, which take up even less space. I like the individual cases though. I’ll have to find somewhere to order a bunch cheap!
I used to keep ours in those cd folders during college, but I found that they tended to fall out and get banged around as the binders got moved and they suffered more damage. We got our sleeves at Target, but you could probably find them anywhere blank CDs/DVDs are sold. Amazon also has them fo sho, just make sure you get the plastic kind, I would imagine the paper sleeves would disintegrate quickly, as least how often we partake of our movie collection. 🙂
Where do you store the cases? Or do you throw them away? The very idea makes me shudder!
We recycled them. My parents have this huge recycling bin provided to them by their village and so we dropped those bags right in there.
But what about the cover art or booklets inside the DVD? Some of those are valuable to me. Maybe there are sleeves that are as tall as a DVD case so the paper cover could be stored with the DVD?
They actually have sleeves that have that capability. I could only find them online though, and I was impatient. Those also have room for two discs which is great for those two-disc special edition sets.
We also did keep a few things in their cases, mostly nerdy box sets and things of that nature, the ones that were extra special to us, but that was only a handful.
We have two huge, zippable binders for CDs and DVDs. They stay nice and snug with their inserts and only take up about ten inches of shelf space. Screw jewel cases and amrays!
Is THAT what those are called? You learn something new every day…
Close, but it’s Amaray. And that is just the most known manufacturer of them; the real name is a keep case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_case
Knowledge is power. 🙂
Yeah I use the zippable binders too. Easier for me when moving. I have over 250 movies and most of the weight was in the cases! It was such a heavy box to move, but the new binder is only 3-5 lbs. It’s awesome! I did keep some in their original cases (movies that i love or cool art).
This is exactly what I do too. It is so much easier.
Is there such a thing as a binder where the DVDs clip/snap in (ala the keep case), rather than slide in?? We keep ours in a typical CD binder, but some of our more frequently watched DVDs have gotten scratched. I haven’t had luck finding anything like this online.
Yes! We just did this. We needed that precious book shelf space for delicious books so we bought a huge CD binder and tossed those cases.