Organizing Your Media And Merch

[Drew_Sutton]

I tried looking for older/existing threads and couldn't find anything on this specific topic. I am wondering what others here on the forum are doing to organize their media collections? Felt like this was the better heading since it could apply to all merch but I am specifically looking for how folks are sorting their anime - BluRays, DVDs, LDs, Tapes (everything!).

I've been doing some reorganization in our "loft" area to make some more room for our daughters to keep some toys tucked away that we can play up there (because the living room is full already and COVID quarantines have made that room really boring to them). For this re-organization, I've moved some from one smaller cabinet into a section of a larger cabinet. Before, the DVDs/BR that were in the small cabinet were the "choice" titles in my collection - lots of Gundam, Megazone 23, Yoroiden Samurai Troopers, etc. The larger cabinet has a lot of my tapes (again broken out into a "choice" and Official Release section), other DVDs/BR with anime separated from other movies, TV, cartoons. So now all of the anime DVDs and BRs are together, but I still feel like it's some weird mis-mash of organization. It's taken me weeks to even get to this point because I was having some serious decision paralysis.

I used to separate everything by format (so the storage matches) and then organize by title (Japanese order) but I have less storage area than I used to (it feels like), so I'm not sure I can go back to that. So I am curious, how is everyone storing their physical anime? Alphabetized? By Age? Studio? Publisher? Separated by format? Anime separate from everyone else?

[usamimi]

I'd be curious to hear or see any suggestions, too--my apartment is small, so organizing is a bit of a pain. Currently I just kinda have things stuffed into wherever there's room, sadly.

[DKop]

I've been putting in shelving in my room that is housing figures, media and games. And yet despite my efforts, it's still not enough in my bedroom. I think im at the point where I need to (well I've been doing this already) go through my things and sell them off. I've been doing that for a while in terms of getting rid of figures (for more figures) and games and keep the stuff I really really like. I've so far gone through a website like Price Charting and im nearly complete with my video game collection and knowing what the value of my games are like.

[_D_]

Organize? LOL...

900 sq. feet of disorganized mess. That's my house. I can't find anything anymore. I did put up 7 shelves in the past year, mostly to get some stuff off the floor. But that didn't really help at all, since I still lost a bunch of stuff I was looking for. And then, I keep adding stuff. Old electronics, new electronics, books, magazines, comics, toys, stuff on sale i end up giving away as wedding and other gifts, etc. But that's my life, such as it is...

[davemerrill]

most of my DVDs and BRs are in some media shelves that Ikea discontinued pretty much the minute after we bought ours, which is a pain. There's some overflow onto some similar shelving. I keep all my DVDs/BRs - movies, TV shows, anime, whatever - all together sorted alphabetically.

There's one display case full of robot toys and figures and what-not, and several other shelves of larger and smaller robot toys. At some point the Japanese robots merge with the Japanese advertising character mascots which merge with the American advertising character mascots which seque into things like Archie jelly glasses and Pogo detergent giveaway mugs and Japanese Sprite cardboard 4-bottle holders.

My LP records and LDs are in another set of Ikea shelves, the big ones with the 12" shelves. VHS tapes are on shelving I put up as an early pandemic project.

The one thing I'm kind of running out of shelf space for is manga; those new Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku volumes take up a lot of space!

[labsenpai]

most of my DVDs and BRs are in some media shelves that Ikea discontinued pretty much the minute after we bought ours, which is a pain.

My no longer in production IKEA media cabinets will hold a total of 216 Blu rays. I've decided that will be my "favorites" library, and everything else goes into cold storage or in a garage sale.

Anything larger than 11x17 or so goes in my flat file, the kind draftsmen used for blueprints. A portion rotates in and out of hanging frames, limited to what fits in the nerd-zoned rooms.

[davemerrill]

we have a flat file that barely fits into our front room, and it's great for posters and artwork. I had to rent a truck to get it home, but it was worth it, I think.

[Drew_Sutton]

I've got some posters that I am trying to sell and would probably buy some more to rotate out in the frames we have hanging but yikes, not being familiar with flat file cabinets (I probably used them last in the high school art room twenty years ago), I had a bit of sticker shock and quickly realized we definitely don't have space for that.

I have been in a sell-buy pattern for a while now, trying to upgrade a format for a title and sell off it's older version, really only for saving space. I'm also finally breaking down and putting some money into a computer I can do video capture with, which means digitizing my tapes and getting rid of the lot of them.

[DKop]

I'll PM you since im always down for posters.

I'm also been in a de-horde mode for over a year now as I'd rather just keep the stuff I really want to own/like and sell of things that mean the least to me that were impulse buys when I got them. This means for anime dvds, games, books, etc.

[Drew_Sutton]

Figured this place is as good an update as any - I've been excited, if not always having the time, that I've finally got something up and running to start digitizing my tapes and LDs. I had a few start-and-stop moments and a good realization that I am not 20-something and single where I could just spend hours troubleshooting and triaging a self-built PC anymore.

I bought a refurbished PC of eBay for pretty cheap but also has some life left to it and got one of these 4K HD Capture devices that streamers like to use as well as an RCA/Conmposite Input to HRMI Output converter and cabled them all together. So I pulled all of the RCA/Composite out of the TV and re-bundled them together so I can easily switch devices into the converter. The PC is running Linux now and I'm using OBS Studio to record, which seems to work really well but I haven't done a full playback test to see how things play on not this PC or how things go burning to BRD, etc.

Since this is about organization -

Code: Select all

drew@japanimation-station:~$ tree ~/Videos/
/home/drew/Videos/
├── Archive
├── Edits
└── Source
    ├── LD
    │   ├── Raw
    │   └── Sub
    ├── New-Capture
    │   ├── [1987] dp-pe-test.mp4
    │   ├── [1988] ThunderCats WOIO19 - raw source.mp4
    │   ├── [1995] Yousei Hime Ren OAV Complete.mp4
    │   └── [2003] Happatai Live on Kimmel.mp4
    └── VHS
        ├── Fan-Subs
        ├── JP-Raw
        └── TV-Tapes

11 directories, 4 files

OBS records and writes everything to New-Capture (where I need to rename them after recording is done) and eventually I'll move them to the other Source folders if needed. Edits are where I'm gonna put things for panel clips, or recordings where I let a whole tape run and I've then cut episodes into single files or commercials I've trimmed out or trying my hand as restoration. The Archive directory is gonna be "finished products" ready for me to back to to HDD and BRD.

Of course, all this is great and all but my wife and I were talking the other night and with the holidays upon us (and our kids just having their birthdays in the last couple months), it's time to start shifting and rotating toys and stuff around, which means I am probably going to be re-sorting, purging and trying to store a lot of the same stuff in less space, so if anyone happened upon any ideas since I created this thread last year, I'm game to hear them but I'm also working it out myself.