Should I discard all of my DVD cases?

Factual Questions
1

I am going to be moving in a few months and I’m right now in the process of trying to better organize everything so that the move will go somewhat easier. I have an insane amount of stuff - clothes, furniture, books, musical instruments, antiques, stereo equipment, cameras, and a lot of other things. Probably at least 5 times the amount of stuff that the average 21 year old has. The over-accumulation of material objects is something that goes back many generations in my family. “It’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it” is my family’s motto. It has many benefits, and one big drawback, which is, it’s difficult to move.

Among other things, I reasoned that one way I can make it easier is to discard all of my plastic DVD cases and put all of the DVDs into a folder. I’m not sure exactly how many DVDs there are in total, but it’s probably over 150, more if you include all the console games. I hardly ever use any of these, but I cannot bring myself to throw them out. Should I throw away all the cases? The downside of it would be that the DVDs are slightly less protected, and if I lose the folder, then I lose ALL the DVDs, whereas if they’re all seperate in cases, then you just lose one at a time if you lose one. I probably would never lose the folder, but you never know. It is a giant leather disc-folder. I don’t know if it will hold ALL of the DVDs, but I have other folders like it if not.

The upside of throwing them all out is that the bookcases that hold them can be used to store books instead of DVDs. I have way more books than DVDs. And naturally, it will make the move much easier.

Should I just bite the bullet and do this? Is there ANY reason to retain those plastic DVD cases?

2

Put them in a box, I will reimburse you for shipping. I never seem to have enough cd/dvd cases.

As long as you aren’t in somewhere where shipping would be cost prohibitive like overseas.

3

You should just buy a disc folder.

4

I’ve put all my CDs into a folder, since I listen to the music that was on them on my laptop or phone’s MP3 player for the most part and so only need the discs as back up.

DVDs I keep in a small set of shelves because it fills a space in the living room and its handier for browsing my collection.

5

If you lose the folder, is it really that big of a problem? I can’t see a good argument for keeping all those cases.

6

Well, if I lose the folder, I lose all the DVDs!

Half of the DVD cases don’t even have anything in them - the disc is somewhere else in the house, or lost altogether.

7

So? You hardly ever use them anyway, right?

I could understand if you were Mark Twain trying to find a place to put all that ink and paper, but if you lose something that you only use to waste a couple of hours a few times a year, who cares?

8

If you dispose of the boxes, how are you going to organise all the inserts - the game manuals, notes, the covers, and so on? But 150 DVDs is nothing - six feet on a shelf. Can you really not spare one shelf? Or half a shelf if you double them up?

9

BZZZZT! BZZZZT! BZZZZT! HOARDER ALERT! HOARDER ALERT! PLEASE REPORT TO ROOM 101 FOR REPROGRAMMING!

Anytime you hear “…but you never know…”, throw it out, donate it or compost it! Seriously. You spent more energy typing that post that you will not replacing the DVDs you never watch if you lose the folder, which you won’t.

Are you hiring movers? How much are you paying them to move half empty DVD boxes? Are you doing it yourself? How much time are you spending thinking about, planning, packing, moving, stowing, carrying and unpacking half empty DVD boxes?

Just…pitch it! Pitch it all! You’ll feel so much better, I promise! I got rid of 3 dumpsters (the big ones they stick out behind apartment buildings) full of crap (in addition to donating what added up to $9,000 worth of clothes and household goods I got to take off my taxes, one ladies’ blouse at a time) when I moved last time, and it felt wonderful! And I couldn’t tell you a single thing I threw out, to be honest. It was all that meaningless and forgettable.

If you haven’t used it for a year, you don’t cherish it and you don’t have a specific plan for it in the next 6 months, then you don’t need it. Whatever “it” is. The freedom you gain in extra space and literal weight off your back is far more valuable than that stack of old AOL CD’s you’re keeping around because maybe you’ll make a mosaic out of them someday, or those empty film canisters that look like they’d be so useful for beads or pills or something…

The Hoarder Alert is also set off by the phrases:
I really should do something with this…
This looks so useful, but…
This was a great idea, but…
Oh, my god, I forgot I even had this!
Um…what is this?
Honey, where did we get…?
Someday I’ll use this to…

Whatever triggers one of those phrases: pitch it! (Or gift it or recycle it or donate it.) And do it NOW before you move it again and it sits in that box that never gets unpacked for two years until you move again.

In case I’m not being clear here: yes, get rid of the empty DVD boxes. Donate any DVD’s you’re not likely to watch again. Put the rest of the DVD’s in a DVD folder and enjoy the six additional feet of elbow room you now have.

[Mom Voice] Quartz! You’re not helping! Bad Doper! Bad! :smiley:

10

This philosophy might work for you but not for me. Many have been the times when I’ve, all of a sudden, had a desire to read a book or play a video game that I haven’t touched in years. I will go looking for it, sometimes tearing the whole house apart until I find it. Sometimes I don’t find it at all and will need to replace it.

I have spent hundreds of dollars in the past year ordering things online that I used to have as a kid but lost. I don’t mind paying for them, but I wish I still had the originals. All sorts of great picture books and things like that were lost in the several moves of my family from one house to another. Hundreds more remain, but are packed into boxes stacked on top of each other and stowed away variously in attics, basements and garages. In those boxes are also many drawings and pieces of writing that I did as a kid over the years, which I sometimes wonder about. It would take me a great deal of time to go sorting through all the boxes, but I feel like it needs to be done.

I remember when there was that thread about the compulsive hoarding and there was a link to some pictures of rooms consumed by giant piles of clutter and things like that. Well, you can be assured that it’s not like that for me. Everything is pretty organized, it’s just that there’s so much of it. My parents and grandparents are the same way - if you go to my grandparents’ basement, there is a full bar down there and behind it, on the shelves, are every sort of knicknack you can imagine, accumulated over their long lives. There are all kinds of strange novelty toys, little racist figurines that aren’t made anymore, artifacts collected from around the world, and things like that. In one of the closets down there, are crates, full of boxes, full of smaller boxes containing little bottles of whiskey and gin from airlines, still sealed in the original packaging, and cigars from over half a century ago. And boxes and boxes filled with unopened, brand new calculators and adding-machines and stuff like that, from the 80s and early 90s, vintage stuff that you can’t get anymore. You have no idea, the amount of that stuff that’s in there. And it’s all very neatly organized.

11

Well, there’s that, at least.

12

You’re online now at this very moment, aren’t you? What’s your excuse?

13

Huh? Do I need one? Will a screwed up sleep cycle caused by oversleeping due to cold medication count?

I wasn’t being snarky or anything - really, if you’re going to hang on to that stuff, having it all neatly organized is a totally good thing.

14

I know, I was just kidding. Sorry if it came off as otherwise. Your advice is very sound advice. I will put all my DVDs into the folders. As for losing movies, this isn’t as big a concern for me as books. It’s always easy to replace a movie. There’s no such thing as out-of-print movies, not really. With books, it’s harder to replace a rare or obscure one.

15

I recently purchased a DVD changer, and I put all of my discs in that. I removed the sleeves/“O” cards and filed them in a binder so that we and my guests can browse the covers for the movies.

I won’t throw away the cases as I have needed cases from time to time, and some of them are “specialty” cases - dual/triple/quadruple disc cases, and some are part of the specialty packaging very common to “Deluxe” editions and such.

I stuck them all in a cardboard box or two and forgot about them.

16

Some types of data/software CD’s do not lend themselves to being organized all in a disc folder with each other. Send the darn things to someone who can use them.

17

Isn’t this question simply a matter of whether you want to do it or not?

18

A 1TB drive is $200. You could put 150-250 DVDs on it uncompressed, and it’s the size of a paperback…

19

If you do end up getting rid of your boxes (and sending them to drachillix, which is an excellent idea), might I suggest keeping at least 2 or 3 around so you can take a single DVD to a friend’s house instead of taking the whole binder? Or so you can loan one or two out?

20

I like my dvd cases. I like how my collection looks on the shelf, with all the different colors all lined up in a row. I like to look through it occasionally and find one I’ve forgotten about and put it on. And I like that the collection slowly grows. The only thing you should or shouldnt do with your caes is what you want to do with them.