Space-saving Idea, Our Bookshelves Through the Years

Now, I know that you are probably thinking that I have a whole blog dedicated to decluttering, but I have wanted to share this idea with you for such a long time now but kept forgetting.

When Anthony and I met many years ago he had an enormous DVD collection. He used to collect all sorts of different DVDs and then, well, he would store them on shelves. By the time we moved into our second home his collection exceeded 500 DVDs of all sorts of different genres. (I always thought this was funny considering how very tv-free our little ones are!)

With a growing family and an ever-growing book collection they simply had to go. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not that mean and would not expect him to get rid of all of his DVDs, but we definitely needed the space and the shelves the DVDs were stored on, and most of all we needed a solution that would work for both of us.

These shelves used to be full – of DVDs!

We started by deciding which of the DVDs he definitely wanted to keep and which ones he wanted to let go of, duplicates, unwanted presents or simply things we no longer enjoyed. We sold a lot of these DVDs on MusicMagpie which worked out really well for us, even though they did take about six weeks to process our parcel of unwanted movies they did buy every single one of them from us. It’s a great way to declutter, you can sell lots of things, from computer monitors to clothing, and I even managed to sell my Blackberry Curve. You can also choose to donate your proceeds to charity which I love!

Selling a large portion of our DVDs that way already made a lot of space on our shelves, which we slowly filled with books.

Of course it still left us with boxes and boxes full of DVDs we wanted to keep.
We thought for a LONG time about the perfect solution and I’m so happy to say that we found it!
About three years ago we bought an Apple TV box and slowly started buying new things on iTunes, which saves us the trouble of storing new DVDs. We don’t have actual TV, so we have to buy everything that we do watch, but buying it online and keeping it on an external hard drive means that they do not take up space.
As for the old DVDs we kept, the solution was simple! They are now stored neatly in a CD wallet , the boxes recycled and out of our home.
With the new-found space, however, we quickly started filling up the bookshelves with more books.

Pretty soon our bookshelves were more than full.

It was time for another declutter, this time giving everything we no longer loved to friends, family and charity.
We painted the bookshelves white and sorted the books by colour to make it easier for the little ones to put the books back in the right spot, and that is how our shelves look now.

Of course they are still pretty full, but a lot of these are books we need for home-education, and the truth is that I find it really difficult to get rid of books. For now I am happy with our solution, and even though I would love some big and fancy shelves these sweet little ones are doing their job just fine.
Have you decluttered anything recently?
Have a lovely day!
♥