How do you organize your collection?

[thatguamguy]

Originally Posted by jzbadblood

My post on 11-03 about keeping Blus and DVDs separate hasn't aged well. I have acquired too many DVDS and am out of room on that shelf so I'll have to recombine everything. I'm keeping DVD snap cases separately on top of the shelves though.

I just built some big shelf space with the intent of having DVDs filed on the smaller side and blu-rays filed on the larger side. But then I actually started loading up the top shelf, and when I realized that it went from A - Blade Runner, I did some quick figuring in my head and realized there wouldn't be enough space for that. So instead, the blu-rays have all of the shelf space, and then the DVDs are stacked on top of them. This actually wound up working really well, I guess the proportional alphabetic distribution in my collection in consistent across DVDs and Blu. Very convenient for swapping out upgraded titles, although I'm already back at "not enough space to shelve new purchases" for most letters. I know it's not great to keep them stored piled up, but this method also minimizes the size of the piles, at least. There's not a lot of weight on any disc.

I also surprised myself and went almost 100% alphabetical, I didn't pull out any directors, which had always been a staple before. I don't have the space to do it right, so it's easier for me to find stuff if it's all uniform. The one exception, I have a shelf which is a catch-all for non-franchise box-sets, multi-movie releases, and short film collections. And a smaller shelf wound up being the perfect place for "performances" -- ie, stand-up, music releases, filmed plays.

Next step for collection organization is I'm getting a big NAS set-up, but that's starting to drift into stuff we're not supposed to talk about around here.

[kingdoxie]

Originally Posted by eiknarf

Now that’s all well and good ... for you. It’s your collection after all

B U T

But what if you weren’t home and you had friends over and they wanted to find a title? What if you passed away and “John Doe” had to go to your collection and find something? That would be difficult, right? Yeah

That’s why alphabetical is “default”.

People store their music collection alphabetically (by FIRST name if the artist goes by their actual name) because so many artists don’t have a set genre. How do you find “Mariah Carey, Metallica and Maroon Five”? All under ‘M’

Unless you have a music store
(Which went out of business)
Sorry Tower Records

Nobody is in my house unless I'm there and I'm not gonna give a damn when I'm dead

[kingdoxie]

I organize by genre with Blu and 4K together. Criterion is it's own section by spine number at eye level; Kino Lorber and ClassicFlix are also separate regardless of genre. I used to keep 4K separate, but once I got above 150 titles it didn't make sense to me.

I also organize within genre: 1950s Sci-Fi is grouped within the larger Sci-Fi section, WWII is grouped together within the larger War/Military section, etc.

The top left shelf is all my unwatched discs in no particular order.

[slimdude]

Originally Posted by kingdoxie

I organize by genre with Blu and 4K together. Criterion is it's own section by spine number at eye level; Kino Lorber and ClassicFlix are also separate regardless of genre. I used to keep 4K separate, but once I got above 150 titles it didn't make sense to me.

I also organize within genre: 1950s Sci-Fi is grouped within the larger Sci-Fi section, WWII is grouped together within the larger War/Military section, etc.

This is a hot mess, how are you able to find anything.. Wouldn't it be much easier if you put everything in alphabetical order from A to Z?

[kingdoxie]

Originally Posted by slimdude

This is a hot mess, how are you able to find anything.. Wouldn't it be much easier if you put everything in alphabetical order from A to Z?

Easy enough for me because over the last 3 years I've pretty much only watched new/unwatched stuff (currently at 120 titles or so). But I still don't have problems with older titles because I know my genres and I can see everything standing in one spot. I also tend to watch groups of movies by genre when I dig into my older stuff. The whole shelving system is 8' tall by 6' wide and can hold about 1400 standard cases at full capacity.

The only small issue I have is finding an unwatched Criterion title because even the unwatched ones are mixed with the watched ones by spine number...so an extra 15 seconds or so.

I also have to remember Die Hard is in the action section vice Christmas where it should be

[JulesAndJim]

Blu-Ray/UHD Blu-ray
1. Movies: sorted by release year from earliest to most recent (in case of box set, goes with earliest movie in set)
2. Television: sorted by year series began with earliest first
3. Concert blu-rays: sorted alpha by artist and then chronological within artist
4. Ballet/opera blu-rays: artist collections sorted by last name of artist, followed by single performance discs sorted alpha by title of piece

DVDs
Same pattern as above except there are no ballet/opera DVDs

[jesseb]

I've got 4 sets of shelves.
Shelf 1 is 6 longer shelves, all movies, formats mixed. It starts off with shared universe films in release order - MCU, X-Men, DCEU - then actor, director, or double feature collections, and then everything else sorted alphabetically, with sequels sorted with their first films.
Shelf 2 is still 6 shelves but very narrow, one shelf is all Buster Keaton, next all Three Stooges, next Looney Tunes, next other comedy actor and shorts collections, next is sports and stand-up comedy, and one empty shelf.
Shelf 3 is another big one and all TV, alphabetically.
Shelf 4 is smaller mostly empty, but shelf 3 is almost full so I have this ready for future TV, it currently just has the Friends complete series, and I'm using it for other stuff til I need it.

[buckeye68]

Mostly by genre with blu-ray and 4K combined. Within genres, I will group by director, studio or theme if there is a tight correlation. I have about 1 to 3 shelves dedicated per genre.

Sci-Fi and Fantasy
Creature Features, Suspense and Horror
Mafia and Mob
Action/Adventure -- spycraft (Bond, Bourne, Hunt, Ryan, etc)
Action/Adventure -- cops and robbers and heists
Action/Adventure -- other
Marvel and DC (with separation ) and comics based
War and Western and Historical
Dramas
Comedies
Concerts/Music/Band biopics
Animated -- Pixar/Disney/Illumination/Dreamworks/etc.
Television
Unclassifiable shelf

It might not be Library of Congress but I find it works well for me

[LMFAObros]

I pretty much just have different sections for the following.
-Mainstream and indie films from 1970s onwards make up a fair chunk of my collection
-criterion, studiocanal, arrow, imprint, umbrella sections
-horror, classics and "family friendly" sections
-tvshows
-shock ent and cinema cult section
-mcu/dceu section
-pile of shame aka the worst of the worst.
-tv shows
-music/docos.

[hatchet man]

By genre and then alphabetical

[gbm82]

chaos

[njdevil254]

I have my Blu-ray movies and UHD mixed together in alphabetical order on one big shelf, with a lot of overflow stacked next to it. I also have a shelf for DVDs, also in alphabetical order. Last, I keep my concert DVDs on a wire rack separate from the movies.

[koover]

I am so out of room. I actually conformed one of our bedrooms for to my own personal room for my audio addiction and all my films. Built customized shelves. Was organizing alphabetically (literally by each letter meaning every single letter in the title) but that took hours. Then I had to move each film every time I bought something else. I made it through the B’s then quit. So now it’s just the first letter of the title. It doesn’t take me much time to sift through a particular letter to find what I looking for. But? I also separate by...
4k
Digi books
Criterion
3D
Animation
Foreign language
TV series
Etc.

Need to build more shelves or add on anther room.

[HD Goofnut]

I decided a couple months ago to put my UHDs in alphabetical within each studio and they look really good IMHO. There's something about the black spined slipcovers looking good all lined up.

[Majin Blu]

I keep my DVDs in a trunk, since I don't have as many of those as I used to. I keep all Blu-rays and UHDs together, in alphabetical order.

- Criterion
- Steelbooks
- Digibooks
- Everything else

I get the desire to arrange things differently. I had my collection once organized by studio, but that last 6 hours. I didn't like it for long. I put too much thought in to go by genre. Alphabetical just seems easier.

I'm pretty good at keeping up with and memorizing Production Year, so I thought about doing that a few times.

[Member-222782]

A to Z. And when I say A to Z I mean every title beginning with each of the 26 letters in the alphabet go into each respective section in random order. I do this to avoid having to move movies around just to accommodate one new pickup. It gets tedious real fast.

[Spooked]

Mostly the same way I've got my collection organized on here: By genre and then alphabetically. (Of course some of my 'genre categories' are pretty unique.) I mostly just like things to match up so I feel like I've got a good handle on what I own and what I don't.

I do need to do a little pruning, though...

(As a side note, I wish all members would catalog their collection on the site. It's a great way to get to know other people's taste in films, and in many cases I've found films new to me while browsing through the collections of like-minded people.)

[Sage00]

My shelf set up:
Horror
Sci-fi/fantasy
Action
Drama
Comic Book
Comedy
TV

Of course, there is a lot of overlap.

[CelestialAgent]

Originally Posted by JulesAndJim

Blu-Ray/UHD Blu-ray
1. Movies: sorted by release year from earliest to most recent (in case of box set, goes with earliest movie in set)

I thought I was alone in doing this!

[Nick Michalak]

For BDs, I have horror in its own section, superhero / comic book films, and then, everything else is combined into a single collection in between them. I have a separate media tower for TV series.

With my DVDs, I have them all separated into genres - horror, action, drama/thriller, comedy, sci-fi/fantasy.