No doubt, you have tons of movies, music, games and photos.  By using these simple strategies, you’ll be able to keep everything organized, your free time will be much more enjoyable and you’ll be able to relax when you want to, just how you want to.  

Alphabetize Items.

It’s much easier to find your movies, music and games if you alphabetize your items. This also helps friends and family members know exactly where to return items after they’ve been used.

Separate Kids & Adult Items.

Sure, sometimes you really do want to watch Lion King or listen to the Lion King Soundtrack  but those times are probably few and far between.  However, your kids (or younger siblings) probably watch these movies and hear this music regularly.  Store their items together and make sure its accessible for them.  Be sure to keep all like items together–Kid Movies might need a separate place from Kid Music, both can be stored where they’re most used.

Review Annually.

Your tastes change over time and there is no reason to keep unused items because they will just clutter up your space.  When you no longer need an item, consider donating it or selling it to make way (and money) for the items that you’d like to purchase in the future.  I suggest doing this annually when you have the most time, our family traditionally goes through each of these categories during winter break and makes our sell/donate piles to take to the store when we have time.

Share Purchases.

Last year, we’d been splitting DVD/Blu Ray purchases with my brother.  Each of us only needed one disc and our family doesn’t save the DVD boxes.  We were able to purchase the movies we wanted at half of the cost normally because we found someone to split our purchases with.  Consider finding a friend or family member to split your media purchases with. Do you really need the DVD, Blu Ray and Digital Copy for yourself?

Take Items Out of Boxes.

This great tip is from my husband’s sister and will save you TONS of storage space.  Purchase one of the travel CD cases and store your DVDs and other items in here instead.  We use it for our movies and have a separate one for our kids movies.  The travel cases keep the movies protected, we can keep them alphabetized and we have minimized the needed storage space for each item.

Use of Electronic Storage Options.

With the new technology today, it’s much easier (and even more condensed than the travel case) to store items electronically–you can do this with movies, games, books, music and photos.  If you keep your music in a storage platform like iTunes and you’ll be able to create playlists, organized music into distinct categories and listen to it at a moment’s notice.  We also store all of our family photos electronically to save space and money.

Capitalize on Free Resources Available to You.

Remember, you don’t need to own everything you like.  Consider borrowing books from the library or borrowing favorite movies, games or music from friends and family.  Sometimes it’s nice just to have the item for a while, but you don’t need to own it once the newness wears off.