DVD Organization

How to Organize Your DVDs

Over the years, my family has collected many DVD's ranging from hilarious comedies to children Disney movies. However, the most annoying thing is when I can not find the movie I am looking for. In addition, I spend hours looking for a DVD only to realize we do not own the movie. I bet all of you have also faced this movie hardship. Therefore, I came up with this way to organize movies that will hopefully make your life a little easier.

Materials:

1. Labels 

2. Computer (Microsoft Excel)

3. DVDs

4. Paper for the printer

5. A lot of Patience

How to:

This process may take awhile, so don't feel like you have to do it all at once. Take your time even if it takes you months. In addition, I would start with taking out your movies, or at least a shelf out at a time to start organizing them. 

1. You will need to gather your DVD's and enter them into the computer. So open up Microsoft Excel on you computer. Start entering the names of your movies in the column A

2. As you are doing so make sure to also make sure to put a number next to the name of the movie in column B. 

Tip! If you do not one to keep typing out numbers you can simply highlight the B1 and B2 by clicking B1 holding and dragging the cursor to B2 and letting go. It should look like this

Then with the mouse put the cursor directly over the bottom right rectangle to where you get an addition sign like this. I'm using a Mac computer, so I am not sure if it is different for other types.  Click and hold when you see the addition sign and as you drag downwards the numbers will continue 1,2,3...to however many you want. 

         

3. As you are entering the movies, I would label them with small stickers on the visible side of movie when in the cupboard. Like this:

Sorry that I do not have real DVDs to show. I just finished coming up with this idea, so I haven't been able to actually get to the real DVDs.  However enjoy my animations!

4. Continue to put all of your DVDs into the computer. For this demonstration I used some of my favorite movies. In the comments below let me know your favorite movie! *When entering movie names I would not include "The" or "A". For example I took out the "The" in The Help*

5. Finish labeling all your DVDs so they are arranged in numerical order. I only went up to 10 for the demonstration. 

                 

6. This next part may be a bit tricky. You need to hold the "A" letter above the column and highlight it to over "B". When a downward facing arrow appears then you can click down and it will highlight the "A" column. Then click hold and drag to the right to also highlight the "B" column.

7.Next, with these two columns highlighted, find the button that looks like this and click it. This button puts things in alphabetical order. If you aren't sure where it is on your computer, simply check the internet!

8. Your movies should now be in alphabetical order like this. The numbers should also stay with the movie they were originally next to if you also highlighted the "B" column. For example, Amazing Spiderman is first and should have the #5 next to it. 

9. Print this sheet out and you can update it whenever you want. I recommend only doing it when you have 10 or more new movies to add. That way you save paper! 

10. When you are adding new movies, follow steps 6-9. If you put the name of the movie and column "A" and the next number (mine would be 11) and follow 6-9 it will re-alphabetize it for you. You may have to click it twice in case it starts with the Z's first. That is what happened to me. 

Now whenever you want to find a movie you can look for it alphabetically and find the number that it is. For Example if I want to watch Kick Ass, I would go to the K's and find it. Then I would look at the number it is. In this case it is number 8.  Since my movies are in numerical order I would just look for #8 and then enjoy the movie!

Hope this tutorial on how to organize your DVDs was helpful! Also I hope that once you are finished, this helps saves you time finding the movie you want to watch! Leave comments below if you have any questions or any other ways you can organize DVDs!