I don't know about you, but we watch a lot of movies at our house. My husband Chris is satisfied to see a movie once, maybe twice if it's amazing or has a big twist he wants to re-watch, but I looooove watching movies over and over again. It's like, if I only have 2 hours to watch a movie and I want to watch a really good one, I will purposely watch one I've seen before that I know is good (like my favorite movie About Time
), instead of taking a risk with a new movie! Or if I'm in the mood for, say, a sad movie with a happy ending, I know exactly which movie to grab (hello, P.S. I Love You
!). The coming months will feature a few of my faves!
For now, though, let me tell you about how I have organized our DVDs. We have a lot of DVDs, and we got to the point where I was shopping for a second bookshelf to hold them all. We weren't even sure where we'd put the extra bookshelf, much less not wanting our DVD collection to be the visual centerpiece of our entire family room. It didn't help that our collection was on display for the world to see and we had an incident where several families from church came over for dinner and one of the pastor's sons immediately went to our collection and made a really public comment in awe of how many "adult movies" we had! Thankfully we were able to quickly clarify that he meant PG-13 and R rated movies, but even so it reminded us that when we had kids started hosting playdates, it may not be great to have every episode of every season of The Sopranos
on display for little eyes.
I tried several different storage methods, including DVD towers, disc-only binders, and using slimmer jewel cases. In the end, I found an even better solution that we just love.
Whenever we get a new DVD or Blu-Ray, I put the discs in one of these plastic envelopes
and place it in this box
. I bought these dividers
to alphabetize the discs (we alphabetize just by letter, we're not that anal about it!) for quicker finding. When I have time, I use this template I made to create a little info sheet on the movie that includes Title, Year, Run Time, Format (DVD/Blu-Ray), and a picture of the DVD Case from Google. Notice I say "when I have time"....the majority of our discs don't have the info sheets yet and that's okay! Most times we can tell what DVD it is by looking at the disc through the sleeve.
A side perk has been because we only need the disc, we are now able to buy disc-only movies. You know how when you buy a Blu-Ray, it comes with both a Blu-Ray disc and a DVD disc? A lot of people sell the DVD disc as a "Disc Only" sale on sites like eBay. For a lot of movies, we're not married to the idea of buying the Blu-Ray version, so if we're willing to take just the DVD, we can buy it for just a few dollars sometimes! Plus, places like Redbox sell disc-only versions of used rentals for only a few bucks.
What used to take up an entire bookshelf and then some now takes up part of just one shelf! Plus, it's easier to take DVDs with us on the go, and it's easier to find a DVD quickly! Not to mention these boxes are less tempting for our toddler to mess with AND the pastor's family can now come over with no worries about our "adult movies"! 😊
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If you have kids, you may know that kids can fly for free on your lap until they are two years old. You also probably know that the closer they get to the two year mark, the more difficult it is to hold them quietly on your lap for the entire duration of the flight!
We're not really a "screen time" family, but we are realistic about how helpful quality educational programming can be when you are desperate: trying to get dinner on the table, trying to survive in a traffic jam, and most of all, trying to get through a flight with a toddler!
Our son Anthony has been on five round trip flights in his first two years, each one getting more and more difficult as he gets bigger and more active! Our most recent flight was to visit my husband in Wisconsin who was there for several weeks on a business trip: my very first flight alone with Anthony.
What got us through:
1) The grace of God.
2) The Target One Spot and its treasure trove of cheap toys that hold interest for even 2-3 minutes at a time.
3) Snacks, snacks, snacks.
4) Letting my almost-exclusively-sippy-cup
-kid have one of his coveted bottles.
5) Our Amazon Kindle Fire.
My husband Chris and I have a family iPad, which is what we used for flights 1-3. However, lately Anthony has insisted on touching the screen and holding it in his hands, and so the iPad became an adults-only toy! Right before our 4th flight, our longest yet (to Hawaii), I bought an Amazon Kindle Fire for him and it was the best money I ever spent! I bought a foamy case for it that protects it from drops, gives Anthony a place to hold it without touching the screen, and fits PERFECTLY in the magazine holder in the seat in front of us - at least on both Hawaiian Airlines and Alaska Airlines.
A tablet without a data plan? How is that possible? The Kindle Fire uses Wi-Fi, and we have Amazon Prime (another post soon soley devoted to how amazing Amazon Prime is) which allows you to download a certain number of TV shows and movies to watch offline for free. So before every flight, I made sure to download a few Daniel Tigers
, a few Sesame Streets
, and a movie for myself in case he fell asleep (WHICH HE DID ON THE FLIGHT HOME! PRAISE JESUS!).
There are also a bunch of free apps you can download that don't need Wi-Fi, like this coloring one, this alphabet one
, and this cars and trucks one
.
What about sound? I bought Anthony a pair of kid friendly headphones, and he does like them sometimes, but he's not a huge fan of things on his head (hats, sunglasses, headphones) much to our dismay. Thankfully, he is still super interested in the muted version so he was captivated even when he refused the 'phones. The thing I love about the headphones we bought is that I am able to use them too, when he fell asleep (see above, biggest miracle in my life so far). But, I have kind of a small head so that might not work for everyone!
For reading, honestly I don't love the Kindle Fire. You can download ebooks onto them and read them, but I don't like the glare you get when you read outside (aka poolside) nor the risk to the Kindle if it falls into the pool...for reading, I prefer the Kindle Paperwhite
which has ZERO glare, is super lightweight, and fits perfectly in a Ziploc gallon-sized bag for when I want to sit in the pool, sip an adult beverage, and read some chick lit
. But maybe a post about the Paperwhite someday; just know that you CAN read on the Kindle Fire if you want to.
If you are traveling with a kiddo, I can't recommend this enough. I've even seen used Kindles on Craigslist for next to nothing! You can restore factory settings and set them up with your own Amazon account, you don't have to buy just from Amazon...just a helpful hint! :-)
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