Ah, movies. Who doesn’t love movies? I am definitely an avid movie fan, which has led to a more than modest movie collection in my home. I’m not sure quite when it started, but in college I definitely was the person to go to if you wanted to borrow a movie in the dorms.

Since then my movie collection has grown exponentially, as I can’t resist checking out movie shelves in stores, or finding the latest Bluray deals on Amazon. I buy movies I’ve seen and love, movies that I’ve heard of and need to watch, or even movies that I’ve never heard of but have interesting descriptions. (Or movies that have Chris Evans in them. Come on, we all have that one actor, admit it.)

However, the last time we moved house, I realized that the collection had gotten a bit cumbersome. It took two suitcases, two plastic bins, and at least two more boxes to move my entire collection (which also at the time included a substantial amount of boxed TV shows). DVDs and Blurays may be smaller than VHS tapes, but the sheer amount I have was just too much to move.

Ah, dorm life. Even then the movies were taking storage priority.

The final straw was when my shelving unit that held all of them became full. To the brim full, no wiggle room at all. My collection was pushing 600, and I couldn’t buy anymore! I realized I had to do something. (And no, downsizing wasn’t an option, as much as my loving boyfriend would have liked me to.) So I began the hunt for a way to transform my movie collection.

After our last move, the shelf was pretty much full. Poor Matt.

The main hurdle was being able to keep the system organized in a way that I could still find everything, and I could add more. I’d kept the collection in binders temporarily before (when I was living out of suitcases, and all the cases were in storage back in my hometown. I am that crazy.) and so I knew that binders are ridiculously difficult to add to if you want to keep them in order. Plus, these days many movies come with multiple discs, or really cool covers, and I didn’t like the thought of giving those up.

Enter these fabulous sleeves from Atlantic!

These not only can hold multiple discs (technically two, but I layer in three all the time), but they allow you to keep the covers from your DVDs/Blurays! Once I transferred all my movies into these awesome sleeves, I had saved so much space. My collection is now around 630 movies strong, and it fits in a space about a fourth of the size that the cases took up.

If you’re creative, you can even fit up to six discs if you need to!

My suggestions:

• When folding the covers, don’t fold directly in half. Instead, fold along the back edge of the spine, so you can see the title listing along the edge of the sleeve. This way you’ll still be able to thumb through the movies on your shelf with relative ease.

• Come up with a visual way to divide your movies in order to find titles more easily. I store my movies alphabetically, so I hand-stenciled dividers that stick out past the sleeves for faster finding. Plus, making your own divisions can let you create separate categories for non-alphabetical series, like the James Bond movies.

Chalk pencils work great for stenciling on black paper.

• I like to have my movies on display, but these sleeves can easily fit in storage boxes if you’d rather keep your collection out of sight. Making mood- or genre-themed boxes could be a great way to categorize your boxes!

• If your collection has become quite large, I highly recommend keeping a digital list of what you own as well. I have a detailed spreadsheet with all my movies, including type (DVD vs Bluray), but I also keep an updated list on IMDb in case people ask what movies I don’t own, for gifts and the like. If you didn’t know you could create and maintain lists of movies on IMDb, you can! It’s really awesome, and really easy!

Now I always keep sleeves on hand for impulse movie purchases, and I’m not living in fear (yet) of filling up my available space. So let me know what movies I’m missing!

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