60 April Featured Space: Living Room - Media Mania

I thought since I focused on Living/Family Room media storage in a couple of posts already this week, first chatting about remote control storage and then component storage.  I figured why not end the week with one last thought on media storage, specifically for movies and video games.

There are boatloads of ways to store and organize media.  From specific drawers within media cabinets:

to bookshelves with baskets:

to special media cabinets:

to CD  sleeves:

to bins and baskets:

With so many options to choose from, organizing media can be pretty straight forward and easy, it's just about what works for you and your space. 

For us, we went through a movie craze, until Netflix came along that is.  We live nowhere near a good rental shop so we would splurge frequently on a good flick to keep at home.  And, when it comes to the kiddos, now we stock up on Disney and Dreamworks favorites for long trips in the car or rainy weekends at home.

Not to mention I married an ex-video game fanatic... I say ex because he finds much less time these days to sneak away and indulge in his improvement of hand/eye coordination.  However, the kiddos are big fans of the Wii they got from their generous gram and gramps, so the games started building up there too.

Since those bulky movie and video game cases start to take up crazy amounts of space, and they aren't the most pleasing to the eye, we decided to try out some fantastic acrylic bins with hanging sleeves inside, which I found at one of my favorite happy places, The Container Store:

 Of course, these weren't necessarily the cheapest option I could have gone for, but the functionality and space saves can't be beat!  You can fit up to 120 dvd's or video games in just one of these puppies.  Plus, I always go for 20% off with an online coupon code and pick up in the store to avoid shipping costs!

Of course, you can't have video game systems without their controllers, which I didn't get featured on the previous remote post. 

All of our media bins and remote basket are conveniently located on a shelf sitting inbetween the playroom and the family room:

Why IHeart our media bins:

Like I mentioned above, these babies store away 120 cd's in each one!  Could you imagine the space that 120 movie and video game cases take up?  And we have four of these little guys.  But of course, they aren't all filled up, we have plenty of room for growth.  If I find something I really heart, like in this case, sometimes I buy one or two extra so that when my belongings expand, I am not having to start all over with unmatched bins.

The movies store conveniently in file sleeves.  Pretty genius setup really.  And all of the sleeves are numbered:

So all I did was create a spreadsheet media key to label all of the movies:

I did end up going with four total media bins.  I use two for the grown-up movies and box sets, I use one for the kids movies and one for the video games.  And like I said, I definitely have some growth room.  Anytime I want to add a new movie to our collection, I just slide it into the sleeve and add it to my list {which is why I didn't type this one out, saves on paper just to write in the new movie vs. reprinting the list with each addition we make}. 

I put all of the individual movies in the front of the bin, and then halfway through, I placed all of our movies with sequels, leaving some extra spaces for ones we know are coming out or we need to add too.  And of course, it's never hard to find a movie in the case because we always have our movie inventory key to reference!

 

So easy!  This way we always know what movies we own, in case we borrow them out or one gets misplaced.  And the kids always know where to grab the movies from and where to put them back, meaning it's easy enough for them to keep our media organized also.  And that my friends is totally another reason why these media bins melt my organized heart.

Lastly, listing out the movies and leaving spaces for sequels that we don't already own, gives me a quick idea when friends and family ask for gift ideas for the kids.  I can look at the list, see that they still don't have Toy Story 2, but have Toy Story 1, and put it on their wish list.

For storage of our gaming remotes, well that was as simple as snagging a wicker basket and putting it with the media bins on a shelf:

One basket was able to hold and conceal a ton!

I totally adore when everything works together in harmony.  From our remotes to our component cabinet to our media storage and gaming control storage, everything has a specific home and it couldn't be easier to keep things in good order!  

So this one is easy.  I am always begging you to share your stuff... everyone has movies... whether 10 or 5,765, I would heart to see how you go about organizing them!  Oh, and just so you all know, you can always share your photos on my Facebook page as well, hint hint!  But if you do, just know I might snag them to share with everyone on the blog too!!