I’ve mentioned a couple of times that we’ve recently realized how too many choices negatively effects us. One area that has become a big issue for us is DVDs. While we don’t watch TV, we love to snuggle up on our tiny love-seat on occasion and watch a great movie.
Over the years we started filling all those baskets you see above with DVDs, and we even got to the point now that there is a stack of overflow. I had this silly idea that if a movie was on sale for only a dollar more than the cost of renting, why not just buy it? The worst part is, with almost 200 movies to choose from we could never decide what to watch (decision fatigue) and so we rented movies most of the time. We applied our new method of purging with great success.
(If you missed it, here’s my explanation of decision fatigue and our new method of purging.)
First we decided that the collection of Disney classics is staying. Then we decided to set a 15 movie per person limit. We separately went through all the baskets and picked out our favorites. I decided my criteria was “do I think to myself ‘I LOVE this movie’ as soon as I see the title?” and “will I watch this movie over and over again?” I didn’t count until I finished, and I was excited to see I only ended up with 11 movies in my pile! It was so much easier to purge this way. And, we ended up having some movies that we both chose as our favorites.
We asked the local rental shop we go to if they would buy the ones we don’t want and they will, for $1 each. (That means we will get our dollar back and should have just rented in the first place, ha!) I think we have about 150 that we’re going to bring over there this weekend. Cha-ching!
The after is basically the same because we’re planning to use the baskets for toys for our son (so we don’t have to buy any new storage as he starts to get some toys)!
This is my biggest decluttering hurdle: my husband’s DVDs. He has been buying more recently, so I enforce the one in/one out rule, but that just keeps the amount the same. We have no room in our little TV console and it stresses me out. I’m hoping if I back off until next year’s ‘spring cleaning,’ I can get him to rethink a lot of them, especially the VHSs. Why do we need Jurassic Park 3 on VHS??
That’s rough! I tried not to ask my husband to de-clutter anything but just started on my own stuff in the beginning. (I did ask him to read certain books and telling him all about the projects I’ve seen weekly on OrgJunkie.com.) After a while he wanted to get in on the action too. Good luck!
Our DVD’s (and I’m a little embarrassed to admit VCR tapes) are out of hand too. My husband never needs anything for Christmas so he always asks his family for DVD’s. Needless to say we have quite a few, mostly unopened. One of these days I’ll get around to working on those. The list seems to be never ending, doesn’t it?
Congratulations on getting those cleaned out.
I just want to know what the 11 movies are! What is your list of must keeps…I may not have seen one of them. I hate to admit this at age 53, but DH and I bought Bridesmaids. I know,I know, potty humor, but it is so funny. Another one that I could watch over and over is Inglorious Bastards. Brad Pitt is hilarious in that movie. We rarely buy a movie, have not done so in a few years, but I knew with 3 daughters that Bridesmaids was a keeper.