I’ve been putting off writing this for a while, because it involved a product that seemed to be out of production.  I’m not sure if that was ever true, but I was having a heck of a time finding them and it didn’t seem right to extol the virtues of something that was no longer available.

Background:

I’m moving to Eugene in a very short time here.  My wife and I have been in our current apartment for nearly nine years.  In that time, DVD has gone from something of a niche, expensive format to ubiquitous and cheap, and we have gone from owning a couple of hundred – when we moved in – to, well, something like three thousand DVDs which we are going to have to move out.

Oh, and we’re probably going to be getting a smaller place, because Eugene is short on large apartments and we don’t want to saddle ourselves with home ownership.

This is the point in a man’s life where he starts somewhat regretting the number of limited edition box sets that he’s bought.

I had two options, as I saw them.  The first was to stick all the DVDs in binders and throw away the cases, which I abandoned as a Crime Against Man and God.  The second was to rip all the DVDs to, mmm, about 10-15 TB of storage and put the physical discs in storage, which I abandoned as a Path To Insanity.

Fortunately, Atlantic, makers of cheap pressboard furniture and plastic storage, gave me a third way: Movie Sleeves, note the little TM symbol, or as they show up on Amazon: “ATLANTIC – MOVIE LUMEN 50 SLEEVES”

I’m not sure what a “LUMEN” is, but I’m not going to let it bother me.

Anyway, these things HERE are Movie Sleeves, note the TM:

They hold 1 or 2 DVDs per sleeve and – most importantly – don’t require you to trim the covers.  I mention that last not because I’m particularly anal-retentive about lopping a half-inch off the cover art, like I’d have to do if I was putting them in slim cases, but because it saves a lot of time when you’re talking about thousands of DVDs.

It also means that, if at some point I had a Really Big Shelf and wanted to expand them out again, I could do so.

Here’s what they look like sleeved, which is partially a picture used for example and partially an attempt to raise this blog’s level of “classy” up a notch from the normal pandering:

See! Miyazaki movies, and not a panty in sight.  Obviously, this represents a classy establishment.

The packaging on these claim that you can squeeze “8 DVDs in the space of 1!” and it’s actually reasonably accurate.  Most of these are two-DVD special editions, the exception being the US Princess Mononoke, and here’s what seven DVDs in four sleeves looks like next to a single DVD in its original packaging:

Mind you, not all DVD packaging goes into these so cleanly.  If it’s anything other than a standard width DVD case, you’re going to have to pull out the scissors and get down to heartless package mutilation.

Anyway, moving this many DVDs is still going to be quite a trial, but, well, less of one.  I guess that’s about all I could reasonably hope for.

By the way, please do my budget the courtesy of not calculating the cost of 3,000 of these at 15 bucks per 50. I’m trying not to think of it.