Have you finally ended up collecting more VHS tapes than you have room for? Are you tired of these tapes occupying more space in your living room than anything else and just accumulating dust? Are you thinking on how to reduce your vast collection?? There are other ways than just throwing these tapes away. Read on to find out more.

Donate some tapes to the hospital. Hospitals always use the television and movies as a distraction for their patients during operations and long stays in the hospital. People who stay in the hospital for weeks or months at a time will appreciate this gesture a lot. But care should be taken in choosing the types of movies that you want to donate. Not all types of movies will be well received. So consider what types of movies the patients might enjoy – family comedy, cartoons, drama.

In a hospital, not only the patients but also the resident nurses and doctors will enjoy the movies on the tapes that you donate. So donating the tapes to a hospital or nursing home makes a lot of sense.

If the hospital near your place does not have a VHS collection, maybe you can help start one. Just make sure that the rooms have VCRs so that tapes can be played to the patients. If the hospital lacks VCRs maybe you could organize a drive to collect old VCRs that people want to donate considering the fact that VCRs are nowadays seldom used after the popularity gained by CD players.

Another way to get rid of those old tapes is to give them away to some children’s home, preschool or daycare. The tapes will really be appreciated there. These tapes will make up some entertainment for the kids on a rainy day. Also, many of these tapes might prove as great teaching and training resources. Non-profit organizations usually run on a tight budget and therefore you could donate your tapes to them. These tapes will thus find a way of being useful to someone or the other.

Here’s a pointer: ALWAYS check the VHS tapes before you give them away, ESPECIALLY to a daycare, or wherever you know kids are going to watch them. You might just end up giving them the wrong tapes – personal, intimate and blooper videos should either be saved, or destroyed, UNLESS you want to look like a clown in your neighbourhood.

If you have the space and the time maybe you could start a VHS tape-rending library. Movies are always in demand among the people. When you give out your movies for rent, you ensure that they remain in good condition so that they can be played anytime. You also significantly reduce the amount of time you have to spend on keeping your collection clean.

Now if you would like to retain your collection but don’t have the physical space to store them in your house then going in to burn them onto compact discs, DVDs or copying them on other electronic media might be the way forward for you. There are a variety of options both hardware and software that will let you achieve this in the comfort of your home. Or you could get your tapes converted professionally. Many stores specialize in converting VHS tapes into CDs and DVDs. Most photo studios and video rental galleries will do this work for you.

Now you see you just don’t have to throw away your VHS tape collection which you painstakingly collected over the years just because you have run out of space or don’t have the time to keep an eye over them or the energy to keep the dust off of them.