A few years ago, someone was moving out of town and they asked if I wanted this plastic set of drawers they didn't have room for, and being the thrifty fellow that I am, I took them up on this offer.
What I received was something like this, built by the Gracious Living company:
And at the time, I didn't realize that the above item was going to become one of my favorite things ever.
You see, the thing that I've never heard mentioned about these particular units is that they are one of the best standard DVD storage solutions (although my title does give that away). If I didn't know better, I would swear that they had that in mind and then looking at how small the market was for just that purpose, they threw the product on the market as a general storage solution.
The reason I make this claim is based on the mathematics the unit employs. Each of those large drawers hold two rows of 18 standard DVD cases perfectly, spine up, so you can read them, and do you know how wide a standard DVD case is in terms of another DVD dimension? Laid flat, a standard DVD case is the width of 9 DVD spines. The extra space at the top of the drawer is 3 DVD spines tall plus a small buffer zone. That means that each drawer can hold in practice 48 cases. And since the width is perfect, that means even the little drawers can hold a fair number of DVD cases flat. They aren't squashed together or swimming in space... the drawers are the perfect size for this task and there is room for you to stick your finger in at the front to pull individual titles out from the front. I admit getting a DVD out from the back isn't that simple, but it is still relatively easy (you just have to get the one in front of it out first before sliding it out), so it doesn't feel like that much of a hassle.
Did I mention they make units with just the bigger drawers too? I've seen ones with 5 big drawers in them, which means you could hold around 240 cases in a unit with a very small floorspace footprint. If push came to shove, you could just put it in a closet or other out of the way area.
Do you want to know how crazy I am about these things? Whenever someone even hints to me that they may be having a problem finding a place for their DVDs, I feel compelled to tell them about these storage drawer units... they just have to know about them. Hell, when I was buying my second one, I was telling people who were working in the store how good they were for storing DVDs. I'm evangelical about them. And the upshot was, when the person who gave me that first one ended up buying another one for the very same purpose after hearing about how good it was for DVD's.
And the thing is, these Gracious Living units are really inexpensive when you compare them to the alternative, and they require very little assembly (you can put some wheels on them if you want, but what you see above is basically how you buy them). When I went to buy a second unit with just 3 of the big drawers, I ended up getting it for about 20 dollars, which is really affordable. When I was looking for a picture to accompany this entry, I noticed that I was getting hits from American retailers as well, like Riteaid and Lowe's, so these Gracious Living products do seem to be available in the States as well. And in Canada, I've seen these units at Zellers, Walmart and Canadian Tire, so they are certainly around if you need one.
It is not a looker, but for the price, the sheer amount of storage and convenience these Gracious Living storage drawers provide, I can't recommend them enough.
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