I think my children know better than to say, "Mom I'm bored!" during the summer break. Before school ended, I thought of some organizing projects that they could do during the summer when they pulled the "I'm bored card".
The first project was organizing our DVD collection into a DVD binder. This project was brought on sooner than expected with the need for my husband to mount our flat screen television to the wall. He had to mess up my cute television cabinet and my already organized DVD storage shelf. How dare him! :-) When the television goes on the wall, there's no need for a storage cabinet....so my kids came to the rescue.
One child read off the title of the DVD and the other typed the title into an Excel spreadsheet. As soon as all the titles of the DVD's were inputted, they could use the "A to Z" format in Excel to put the titles in alphabetical order. They printed out the excel sheet and placed it in the front of the binder to be used as an index.
Next, they made a template to measure the size of the binder DVD pocket to cut out the label for each DVD.
The first project was organizing our DVD collection into a DVD binder. This project was brought on sooner than expected with the need for my husband to mount our flat screen television to the wall. He had to mess up my cute television cabinet and my already organized DVD storage shelf. How dare him! :-) When the television goes on the wall, there's no need for a storage cabinet....so my kids came to the rescue.
One child read off the title of the DVD and the other typed the title into an Excel spreadsheet. As soon as all the titles of the DVD's were inputted, they could use the "A to Z" format in Excel to put the titles in alphabetical order. They printed out the excel sheet and placed it in the front of the binder to be used as an index.
Next, they made a template to measure the size of the binder DVD pocket to cut out the label for each DVD.
The list they had printed out gave them the order in which to place the DVDs alphabetically in the binder. They started with the first DVD cover and cut the main title fonts and photo to fit in the pocket. (Some DVD covers slip out of the plastic jacket on the DVD case, others are cardboard. If you don't have a case, you can always go to the Internet and print out a title and photo )
They first put the cut out label into the pocket and then placed the DVD in the pocket. This will make the removal of the DVD easier and the label will stay in the binder.
Now we have over 75 DVDs in one little binder!
The left over cases were put in a box and listed on FreeCycle.org. They were gone the next day! BTW...Freecycle is a great resource to give items away to others than can use them.
Every time they open the DVD case, they are so proud of their project! When a child helps with a project they take ownership and thus, help to keep the system successful!