Moving to a new home presents the perfect opportunity to organize your media collection(s). Media can come in many forms: books, comic books, movies, music, video games, and vinyl albums. Needless to say, the more you have, the harder it can be to find what you’re looking for. Plus, your items look much better when lined up uniformly. Below are our step-by-step instructions for organizing your media collection after you have moved.
Step 1: Designate a Place for Everything
Before you begin your organization effort, make sure you have a place for all your items. It can be frustrating to discover that you won’t have enough space for all of your items while in the middle of organizing everything.
Most items fit on shelves, but you can also use filing cabinets or special containers. A lot of media comes in standardized cases, like CDs or DVDs, so try to find shelves built for those mediums. Doing so will increase space efficiency.
Step 2: Categorize Everything on a Broad Scale
Once you have designated a place for everything, choose an organization style. We recommend organizing by type of media (it might confuse you to mix music with books or video games). Here are some common ways to arrange your media:
- Alphabetically: This is the most obvious way to organize. It also affords you quite a few options for how you can arrange your collection. For example, you could organize by author or by title. For books, organizing by author is common, but for movies and video games, most people prefer to organize them by title.
- Genre: Genre is a popular method of organization. However, it can be a little confusing. Genres can include action, drama, romance, mystery, comedy, horror, science fiction, or nonfiction. You can choose an infinite number of genres depending on your tastes and opinions. Choosing them depends on your tastes and what genres your media emphasizes. If you’re unsure of which medium fits into a specific genre, you can always look to Google for help!
- Color: If you like art, organizing by color might cater to your tastes. Many people like to display an interesting color arrangement, or any other display that catches the eye. You can even create a rainbow by arranging the media together in a ROYGBIV pattern. We recommend this method only if you have a lot of media to work with.
- Date: You can organize all your media by the date each was originally published. You could also organize them in the order that you first read or watched them.
- Chronology: If you have a lot of historical media, you could organize it in historical order. Similarly, if you have a lot of long series, it doesn’t always work best to list them alphabetically. For example, if you purchased all the Marvel films, you might want to put them together in the order they came out.
Step 3: Categorize Everything More Specifically
Once you have organized your collection on a broad sense, some people like to choose a more specific level of organization. For example, if you organized your first tier by genre, you might choose to arrange your media alphabetically within that genre. A second tier is not always necessary, but it can help.
Step 4: Catalog Your Collection
If you have a large volume of media, keeping a catalog is essential. We recommend having a list of all your media in the order that you chose to organize them. That way, if you take something off the shelf, you know exactly where to return it. Keeping a digital spreadsheet is another step up, because then you can sort through the data to find what you need.
Step 5: Label all of the Things!
This last step is optional, but some people like to label their shelves. This is especially useful if you need move to a new home and haven’t established your bearings yet.
You or the moving company can easily mark boxes with the appropriate label as you unpack shelves. Thus, unpacking becomes easier.
As you unpack and organize your media, follow some of our suggestions, and you’ll always find the media you’re looking for!
Are you anticipating a move? Do you want the professionals to pack away your valuable media collection? Contact Wheaton! Our agents are all expert packers and the industry’s best in moving your household goods from your old home into your new home. Swing on over to our estimate form to get started today!
