The Best Solution to Easily Organize DVDs & CDs

Our family has always loved to watch movies together! Whether at home or in our camper, it’s so fun to pop some popcorn, grab a cozy throw blanket, and watch one of our favorite movies!! The only thing that spoils our fun is when we choose our DVD and it’s not in the case or we find a different movie in the box instead! If that’s happened to you too, I have the best solution to easily organize your DVDs & CDs! I was able to go from all of those cases to two baskets!! Keep reading to see how I did it!!

Who watches DVDs anymore?

I must confess that most of our movie, and TV watching, is now done with streaming, and we rarely purchase new movies. However, we are not going to get rid of our DVD collection.  We occasionally pull them out at home and use them when we set up the projector for an outside movie.  We always take some camping with us because most campgrounds do not have reliable wifi.

Use the 6/P strategy to organize DVDs

I have a wonderful strategy that I use to organize every room in my home and we are going to use that same process, and tweak it a bit to organize our DVDs.

1. prep

Sort the DVDs you want to keep into categories. Make a separate pile for the ones you no longer want or won’t watch again.

Suggestions for sorting your DVDs

• Alphabetical-put each of your DVDs in alphabetical order.
• Genres-this is a great way to organize if you usually pick your movie based on what your mood is. For example, “I need a good laugh, I’m in the mood for a comedy!” Then look through the comedy section!
• Rating-If you have a large age range in your family and you don’t want younger children watching adult movies, you can put different rated movies into seperate storage containers.

2. Purge

Make a plan for the DVDs you will not watch again. Decide if you will sell or donate them. Don’t procrastinate, get them out of your house right away!

If you removed the DVDs from their cases recycle them!

3. Polish

If you are keeping the DVDs in their cases, dust them before you put them back on a shelf.

If you decide to put the DVDs into sleeves, then alphabetize each category to clean it up, so you can easily find what you want! 

During this step, you should take time to make an inventory of all of the DVDs. I suggest typing it and putting a copy with your movies.

4. Personalize

Determine how you will contain the DVDs.  You can use baskets, boxes, or bins and put them on shelves, inside drawers, or in file folders. But I think the best solution to organize your DVDs and CDs is to purchase a specialty organizer.

At first, I thought I could store the DVDs in the drawers of our TV console table. I soon discovered a big problem…you could not see or get to the DVDs in the back of the drawer. This just was not going to work! I had to find a better way.

After doing some research, I discovered these plastic sleeves. I was so happy because this would take up so much less space without the cases.

5. Place

Place the DVDs in your storage container of choice. We’ll be using the baskets inside our TV console table.

6) Put Back

The only way to keep this in working order is to put the DVDs back or it will never stay organized.  Train yourself to put a DVD back as soon as the movie is done!!

repeat the 6/p strategy to organize cds

You can use the 6/P strategy to organize our CDs just like you learned to do the DVDs.

How we organized our DVDs

These are the steps that I used to organize all of our DVDs!

First sort the DVDs

We decided to sort by genre. Here are the categories we came up with.

• Action
• Animation/Disney
• Animation/Other
• Comedy
• Drama
• Favorites
• Fitness
• History/War
• Holiday
• Kids
• Musicals
• Nature
• Sci-Fi
• Super Hero

make dividers to seperate genres

I cut several pieces of cardstock in half and used my label maker to print the titles of each section.

Remove DVDs from cases

Next, I removed the DVDs from their cases and took out the jackets.

Then I placed the jacket inside the sleeve and put the DVD behind it. I had to cut a few of the larger jackets to make them fit!

Put DVDS inside Baskets

I put the divider cards I made inside the baskets and added all of the DVDs! Each genre is in alphabetical order!

Store Baskets

The last step was to put my organized baskets into the TV console table. I am so excited to have the DVDs out of sight! I think the baskets look great inside my console table!

How we organized our CDs

We used the same steps as above to organize our CDs. We chose to purchase these great CD zippered cases to store them in. Then we put the cases in a basket and stored the basket inside the TV console table! Each case has a different type of music.

Can you believe we were able to fit all of those DVDs into two baskets!! Amazing how much less space that is going to take up!! So glad to have this task done! I think using plastic sleeves and zippered cases is the best solution to easily organize your DVDs and CDs! I highly recommend both products! Has this post inspired you to organize your collections, let me know in the comments below!

Blessings, Donna and Rich

More Organization Inspiration

If you need help organizing other areas of your home, click on the links below!

• 5 Secrets to Maintain an Organized Living Room
• How to Beautifully Organize Pet Supplies
• Six Easy Steps to a Fall Coffee Bar
• Master Bathroom Organization Made Easy
• How to Organize Every Entryway to Your Home

Get the Look

For your convenience, we have provided links to the products we used in this project. If I could not find the exact product, I chose something similar!