We love family movie nights! That means we tend to buy a lot of our favorites when I find them on sale. With that I started to realize we were running out of room but even after clearing out the ones we don’t watch anymore, it still wasn’t enough space. So I decided to make the switch and take all my DVD’s out of their cases and use DVD sleeves!
At one point I had all our DVD’s in the closet close to our family room but after some rearranging, that became our area for family games and blankets. So the DVD’s moved to the TV console which worked well, until we accumulated to many DVD’s from garage sales, Amazon deals and Christmas gifts. So I started racking my brain on how to save space. First I thought a CD case would be perfect. We can have a CD case for the different categories of DVDs we have from kids movies, family friendly, Disney, etc. But then I realized that would mean I’m throwing away the movie covers or having to store them in another space and I didn’t want to do that. My goal was to keep the covers with each of the discs.
So I found these DVD sleeves and realized how perfect they were. I could keep the movie covers with the discs and not have to throw them away. You might ask why I want to keep the movie covers so let me explain. In the end I really want all my movies digital but we don’t have the funding to transfer them all right now. About once a month I’ll try to add a couple of our favorites to our Vudu account using their Disc to Digital feature. This requires me to scan the bar code on the back of the covers and cost $2 per movie. I love this features but note, it doesn’t work on all movies so those ones we’ll hold on so we still have access to them.
To get started you’ll want to first go through all your movies and clear out the ones you no longer watch. As yourself, have we watched this movie in the last 2 years? If not think about possibly letting it go. Donate to GoodWill or offer it to a friend or family member. Once you’ve done this you’ll know exactly how many sleeves you’ll need.
Once you have your sleeves it’s time to start switching them over. You’ll pull the cover out of the case and fold it. I liked to have the title (along the spine) on the same side as the front cover so I folded each cover along that same line. (as pictured above) Place that inside the sleeve. Then you’ll add your discs to the insert provided and place them inside. That’s it.
Now I know this might sounds weird to some of you but I struggled to get rid of the cases. I have to remind myself I’m clearing up space and it’s worth it to part with the cases. You can donate them but I found it best just to toss them into a garbage bag and get them out of the house. Remember, DVD’s don’t have a great resale value (exactly why we can find such great deals on them) so you don’t need to worry about holding onto the cases for resale, in my eyes it’s not worth the space it takes up in my home.
Now you just need a great home for them all. Storage bins are perfect, we just placed our right back into the tv console drawers where they’re still sorted into categories so the kids can easily find the movie they’re looking for! This has definitely been one of my favorite transformations in our home. I hope you enjoy all the free space you clean up!
** These DVD Sleeves are on sale right now on Amazon – I paid full price for them so if you want to make the switch, grab your sleeves NOW!
