With the new year starting out and the world still in the throes of Covid we are all busy looking for things to keep us occupied. Staying at home is still the best option for most people so why not do some decluttering and organizing while the weather is cold?
While we are spending extra time at home why not do some remodeling, reorganizing or decluttering? Start with a design plan for your whole home and then simplify it by choosing a small area to begin with like your TV area. This project doesn’t have to take a long time and can, be easy to streamline, and give you the feeling of success.
Lets start with assessing your TV area… Do we need a new place to put the TV? Whether you call them TV stands, entertainment units or media consoles they all serve the same purpose, they house our TV, the components that go with it and DVDs and/or VHS tapes. Is your TV stand starting to look old and haggard or has your TV just been sitting precariously on piles of books in one corner of your room? Measure the area where you want the TV to sit and decide which components will be staying with the TV. That will help you decide what size of TV stand that you need and how much storage needs to be a part of the console. With the variety of media units available you can choose from metal, glass or wood in any number of styles from traditional to contemporary. Try and get a unit that will stand up to opening and closing the cabinet doors and that feels solid when you open it. Quality in this piece of furniture is important because it will get a lot of use over the years so solid wood for this unit is always a good option. One of our favorites is the Canadian made, Handstone Pemberton HDTV Cabinet. It will fit into most decors and stands up to the everyday use that it will get.
Now that you have decided on what type of media stand you want it is time to go through what you have around your TV currently and see what can be donated or discarded. If you were a collector of Disney VHS tapes as many of us were, you might have been thinking that you should keep them to show your grandkids or rewatch some day. With the arrival of Disney plus and the options available on Netflix, Crave and regular TV these days, there isn’t really any reason to hold on to old VHS tapes. They are now almost obsolete other than a select few people who continue to use them. Even DVD’s aren’t being bought and used like they used to be. With all the streaming services available people have transferred their viewing time to those streaming services or shows that they have PVR’d rather than buying DVD’s. Cleaning out all those tapes and DVD’s will give you a lot more room in your TV storage area. The new gaming systems are much smaller than they used to be and many games now can be downloaded online and if you do buy them they take up much less room than the older bulkier models. Clearing out old DVD’s, VHS tapes, gaming systems and games that don’t get used anymore will help you to make your area look organized and clutter free.
The next step after buying and moving the new media unit into your room is putting your items back in an organized fashion. Using a console like the Four Hands Trey Media Console most TV’s can sit on top of the TV stand or be mounted on the wall above the unit. As with this shelving unit, there is room for any gaming systems or cable boxes to sit near your TV in the open shelving. The cords can be fed through the back of the unit and with zip ties, Velcro strips and surge protectors we can organize the cords so that they are not all in a mess behind the piece. The hidden storage behind the doors and in the drawers is perfect for those DVD’s that we don’t want to get rid of, and to hold any games for the gaming systems. With any extra room in our newly acquired TV unit we can put in family games for games night and that can take care of another pile of stuff.
Now that we are finished our organizing project it is time to settle down for an episode of Bridgerton, Arrested Development or some sports.