An Embarrassment Of Movie Riches

Movies are our thing.  As a family and individually, if we're home, we're watching a flick.  On my first date with Mr. Incredible, we went out for lunch and then came back to my house and watched National Lampoon's Vacation (true story!).  My paradise is a trip to the Sundance Film Festival with a few friends and a backpack full of foldover sandwiches and six movies back to back (this has happened, and it raised the standard for movie awesomeness).

We cancelled our cable almost a year ago, and in the interest of filling that void, we upped our internet speed and loaded our Roku Box with Netflix and Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime.  We also have a shelf full of the movies that we love and must own, as well as Boo's other shelf of all of the Disneys.  We are loaded to the gills with movies.  It's becoming a problem.

On any given Friday or Saturday afternoon, we'll say "Hey tonight let's watch a movie."  Fantastic.  We put Boo to bed by 8:30 with high hopes to start a movie by 9.  And then we start clicking through the Netflix queue (184 titles as of this morning, after a 10% purge).  Then we move on to Hulu in case there's something they've added that we don't know about.  Then we go to Amazon Prime, in case there's something they've added that we don't know about.  We've likely added a dozen or so movies that garner an "oh that's a good one but not for tonight" response along the way.

An hour later, we still haven't picked a movie, and now we're drowsy because we've spent an hour slackjawed doing basically nothing.  And we end up just turning the TV off.  There's just too much from which to choose.  We are paralyzed by the sheer size of the available selection (poor us!).

One of the reasons we cancelled cable was that we spent so much time surfing past crap (there's really too much to link to...) to end up on one of the dozen channels we always watched.  Truth be told, a year later, all I really miss is Food Network and Turner Classic Movies.  Mr Incredible misses the ESPN genre.  Boo doesn't really care because she still gets all her same stuff, to the point where she has skewed my Netflix recommendations firmly into Children & Family.

So what do we do?  I mean, it's totally a First World Problem, I know.  But it's everywhere.  We shop at Costco, and while I love what they have, I hate how much of it you have to get.  There's just so much.  It's like we've forgotten what it's like to have enough of something.  We were watching Mary Poppins (for the billionth time) (because it's a movie and that's what we do) and she says in her inimitable way, "Enough is as good as a feast".

Enough is as good as a feast.  Whoa.  Mary Poppins, you just blew my mind.

I've talked about my love of "galore".  In my world, galore is when you have enough to share.  A hundred thousand available movies is not galore.  A hundred thousand movies is overwhelming to the point where I just go get a book (or I download one to my just-acquired Kindle, which has opened up a whole new world of overwhelming...).  It never ends.  It's not a feast.  It's gluttony.

Even though everything that is available may not take up actual physical space in our home, it's still clutter.  It's a mess in my head, and that's just as bad as a mess in my house.  Worse, in fact, because it's not like you can just un-know something and get that brainspace back.

I'm not sure what my solution is for this one.  What's your solution?  What do you do when there are just too many options?  Are you like me and you just check out?  Or do you pick something just for the sake of picking something and settle and it's FINE.  This is probably not the last time I'll write about this topic.  It's ongoing for me.