From A-Z to Pure Chaos: How We Organize Our Physical Media

Walk into the home of any physical media collector, and you’ll spot it immediately: the shelf. Rows upon rows of cases, crammed with movies of every type—action, drama, comic-book spectacle, giallo oddities, and the collected works of cinematic heavyweights like Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese, and Federico Fellini.

With so many films competing for space, knowing where everything lives becomes crucial. The problem? There is no universal system for organizing a physical media collection. There is only your system—elegant, logical, unquestionably perfect—and everyone else’s, which is unhinged and borderline criminal.

So let’s break down the various methods people use to tame the shelf.

Alphabetical

The most accessible method is also the simplest: alphabetical order. Everything is filed A–Z by title. No guesswork, no debates, no hunting. If you own it, you know exactly where it lives… unless, of course, someone else starts fiddling with your shelves and has the unmitigated gall to put something back in the wrong place. Absolute monsters.

Naturally, even alphabetical purity comes with its own set of headaches. Are you really going to separate Goldfinger from Skyfall? Do Iron Man and The Avengers deserve to stand alone, with the rest of the MCU spread across the entire shelf? And then there are the box sets. Those 3-4 film collections are great space-savers—not to mention easier on the wallet—but they introduce one crucial question: which movie gets to dictate the alphabetical destiny of the entire set? These are the questions that can keep you up at night.

By Genre

Many collectors swear by genre-based organization, carving their shelves into neat little kingdoms: horror over here, sci-fi over there, and so on. The trouble starts when movies refuse to behave. Where does Alien live—horror or sci-fi? Is Terminator 2 action, sci-fi, or both? Does Seven belong with thrillers, crime films, or horror-adjacent features? Genre sorting assumes movies stay in their lanes, and cinema has never been good at following rules.

Then there’s the question of scale. Depending on your preference, some genres can easily balloon out of control, while others struggle to justify an entire shelf. Suddenly, you’re debating whether “crime” is its own category or just a subdivision of drama, and at that point, you’ve officially gone too far—though you’ll absolutely pretend you haven’t.

By Director

For some collectors, the shelf is less a storage solution and more an auteur shrine. Movies aren’t just movies; they’re chapters in a filmmaker’s career. Kubrick. Spielberg. Tarantino. Scorsese. There’s something undeniably appealing about seeing a director’s entire filmography laid out in order.

Naturally, it’s not without complications. What do you do with sprawling franchises where the director changes with every installment? Where does Jurassic Park go once Spielberg exits the picture? And heaven help you when a filmmaker only has one movie you care about—do they earn their own space, or get awkwardly folded into a miscellaneous section? Director sorting is elegant, but it assumes you’re comfortable making some brutally decisive calls.

Boutique Label

If you’ve been collecting physical media for any length of time, odds are your shelves include at least a few boutique label releases. Criterion. Arrow Video. Scream Factory. Kino Lorber. Vinegar Syndrome. Radiance Films. One of the biggest appeals of organizing by label is the aesthetic. Many of these companies design their releases to look good together, practically daring you to line them up. Criterion’s clean spines form a minimalist wall of cinephile credibility, while Arrow’s limited editions—with their rigid cases, booklets, and reversible art—feel more like curated artifacts than simple Blu-rays. Plus, seeing them grouped together is just deeply satisfying, akin to a museum exhibit you accidentally built in your living room.

Of course, this approach comes with its own trade-offs. Sorting by label means genres, directors, and franchises get scattered across the room. Your horror shelf is now fractured between Scream Factory, Arrow, and Vinegar Syndrome. Your Kubrick films might be split between Criterion and a standard studio release like a cinematic custody battle. But for collectors who value presentation as much as content, boutique label organization isn’t just practical—it’s a flex.

By Format

If you’ve been in the collecting game long enough, your shelves probably double as a time capsule of home video history. Sorting by format is one of the most practical approaches out there, giving each era its own clearly defined space: 4K Ultra HD up top, Blu-ray beneath it, DVD holding on for dear life, and—if you’re truly committed—VHS and LaserDisc lurking like relics from a bygone age.

There’s something quietly satisfying about seeing a title upgraded over time, watching it migrate from DVD to Blu-ray to 4K like a Pokémon evolving into its final form. Plus, you can always make a few bucks to feed your collecting habit by selling the old versions of your upgraded movies. But will you?

The downside, of course, is fragmentation. Your Alien movies might be spread across three formats depending on when you bought them and how patient you were about upgrades. Of course, there are also countless movies which haven’t made the leap to the HD era.

Other Methods

Beyond the usual suspects, there are plenty of other methods lurking out there. Some collectors organize chronologically by release year, turning their shelves into a living film history. Others go by purchase date, a system that quietly tracks their ongoing obsession.

And then there’s the colour-coded method. It turns your movie shelf into a Pantone swatch book. It’s visually stunning, completely useless, and guarantees that finding a specific movie becomes a memory game you didn’t agree to play.

How I Do It

I genuinely enjoy organizing my collection, which should probably be a warning sign. My system is a hybrid approach, pulling bits and pieces from several methods and fusing them into something that mostly makes sense. Titles are arranged alphabetically, but franchises stay together because separating them would be barbaric. I also sort by format, with 4K Ultra HD taking priority, followed by Blu-ray, then DVD. And, as my boutique label stack has grown, I’ve started grouping those releases together as well, with mini-sections of alphabetical titles sorted by format.

The end result is a carefully calibrated system that feels coherent, deliberate, and completely impenetrable to anyone but me—a slow, methodical descent into madness which I disguise as organization.

Now, take to the comments and let us know how you organize your physical media.

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