By the time the P-Touch arrived, I had already mostly organized the playroom.  Of course, it still had plenty of room for improvement.

Using a gift card provided by Mom Central and Brother P-Touch for the organizational project, I went to Target and purchased some Rubbermaid storage bins of various sizes and a metal shelving unit.  We had shied away from these kinds of units before, worried that they would topple over on the kids.  This particular unit, however, is one that B’s father has used to keep his many plants.  It is very sturdy, so we got one for our playroom.

Before long, the mess of puzzles, games and other toys were tamed.  I couldn’t affix labels to the metal shelves, so I purchased some luggage tags.  After putting the labels on these, I hung them on each shelf to show just what belonged there.

The storage bins were used to store toys such as Legos (previously jumbled in a much older storage bin whose lid didn’t fit on right, Lego figures (tossed in with the Legos and thus often lost), and Hexbug tracks.

This has really helped us out.  Not only do we have a playroom that the kids can use, but we’ve been able to move more toys into it.  This means less toys downstairs to clutter the living room or the boys’ room.  While before the boys were content to stay downstairs on the couch watching TV, they’ll beg to go upstairs now.  (Despite the fact that the TV up there doesn’t get cable.)  They have no problem putting toys away upstairs (since the “homes” for each toy is so clearly labeled.

As for the Brother P-Touch, I found it very easy to operate.  After the first labels came out with tiny type, I explored the settings and found that there are plenty of options.  You can change the font size, bolding, the font itself and more.  After about three minutes, I was able to produce labels that looked just like I wanted them to look.  It’s a simple machine, but one with many options.  The previous label makers I’ve used, were from a decade or two ago.  It’s interesting to see how far they’ve progressed.

Disclaimer: I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Brother P-Touch and received a product and gift card to facilitate my review and a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.

As mentioned in last week’s Aloha Friday, I’ve been thinking about cutting the cable cord. As part of my thinking, I was considering our DVD collection. Right now, our system is to pile our 100 or so DVDs on shelves in our entertainment center. This might seem like a fine system, but there are only two shelves for the DVDs. In addition, the shelves are behind glass doors that frequently get blocked by kids’ toys. This means that it is difficult to read the titles of the DVDs and it is hard to get to the DVDs themselves.

I first looked into a system to rip our DVDs to our desktop computer and then stream those movies to our living room television, but that proved too tricky. The technology is out there, but it didn’t seem proven enough for me or required too much of a monetary investment. Then I looked at similar systems, but ones that would host our videos in a set top box. These too, exist, but didn’t have good enough reviews to make me feel comfortable in spending the hundreds of dollars to set it up.

I began to think that I was – as usual – trying to cobble together a high-tech solution when a more inexpensive, low-tech solution. So I looked at some shelves, but the sturdy ones were too big for our small living room and the ones that would fit into our living room would be too flimsy around the boys. My current plan is to simply catalog and categorize our movies and print out a list. Then we can look at the list and know exactly what there is to watch.

My Aloha Friday question is: How do you organize your DVD collection so that you know what you have and can quickly select a title to watch?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #8