NSBR: VHS tapes and VCR's...do you?

[Lena Brandenburg]

We have been phasing out VHS tapes for years and only purchasing DVD's, but I think we may 86 them altogether from our possession. With a portion of our income tax return we had decided to purchase an LCD HDTV and a new entertainment armoire (Naomi had figured out how to FLING the doors open of the old one and it there was no good way to childproof it)

I put together my beautiful new armoire last night and realized that there really isn't room on the shelves of this one for our electronic equipment, VHS tapes and DVD's. (there was barely enough room on the old one). Today we will be making the actual move of all of the equipment, and it is SO tempting to get rid of the VCR and the tapes for it, too! Of course there are some movies that I love but that doesn't mean I have to own them...or they can be replaced with DVD's one at a time.

My new furniture just looks so nice with the fancy TV on it (we were living in the stone ages I guess and our DVR cable box and DVD player....I don't know if I want to set us back 20 years by adding the VCR and tapes...It's about 40 tapes I'd be getting rid of (I will let Nathan keep about 10 tapes that he loves and his VCR in his room)...it's a big step but I'm not sure that keeping them is really accomplishing anything.....what do YOU think?

[Darcy Baldwin]

We're phasing out all of our vhs. We're purchasing replacement DVD's for the ones we really love or donating the rest as we do another sweep.

[Lena Brandenburg]

thanks, Darcy...glad to know I'm not the only one who is thinking this way...I bet my local library would love to have them!

[scrapmuch]

well - the library I work at is phasing out VHS tapes in the adult dept. Don't know about the kid dept. It's a space issue for the library, too. As tapes wear out or are lost, they are withdrawn from the collection.

However, my library's "friends of the library" organization has a yearly sale where donated materials which are not put in the collection are sold. So we might still take them. but they did stop accepting cassette tapes recently - they just don't sell!!

[sprauncey1]

If they are kiddie ones then I would donate them to the library or local church or something like that. The adult ones you could put on ebay, maybe someone is looking for some cheap tapes and you could make some $ towards new DVDs.

[Lena Brandenburg]

I know but Kim I'm soooo lazy! LOL! I'm an avid eBayer but ugh......I just counted...I have about 25 kids ones and about 30 regular movies....and this is the horrible part of the confession....I donated almost SIXTY of the even less used tapes just a month ago because the clutter was getting to me!

I can't wait for you to see my new pretty armoire next week when you come over....which will be sans clutter and updated to the 21st century!

Mary...yes our libraries use donations for the Friends of the Library sale primarily as well!

[ACE's Wild]

We are in clean-up mode because the new baby will need the room that everything is stored in, so all our VHS tapes & the one VCR we still have left has to go...somewhere!

[nikkiARNGwife]

When we moved back in 2002 we hauled in 2 huge boxes of vhs tapes and stored them in a closet for 5 years. This time when we moved we trashed them. We don't even have a VCR anymore.

[rach3975]

Our VCR started eating tapes a few months ago, and we replaced it with a DVD recorder. The only VHS tapes we still have are ones we recorded, and I'm almost done copying the last of those onto DVD. In a few weeks the VCR and all VHS tapes will be gone.

Our preschool has a video lending library. I was going to donate our tapes, but I noticed that the lending library is starting to become a VHS dumping ground. The library is growing by leaps and bounds because so many of us are clearing out and donating tapes, but it's getting used less and less because it's full of a media form many of us no longer use. In the end I threw out our tapes.

[thumper6423]

Our VCR died before our last move. DH had bought it when he was stationed in Korea in 1993. We trashed it since it was no good, and phased out the tapes one by one with DVD's. I had given all the tapes to my aunt who didn't have a DVD player until 2 years ago. We had a DVD player when our oldest was a couple months old, so we had very few VHS kid tapes. The ones we did have were given to us.