I never had much on commercial video, but I've made it a priority to buy those things on DVD as they appear, so my scheme probably won't help much.
For the homemade tapes, I had the issue of 6-8 hours per tape, not necessarily all one show, so about 4-5 years ago I rather energetically made a database by tape with what was on each tape. Show name, season, episode number etc. I also have a field for whether I have it on a commercial tape/DVD or don't need to replace it. As I buy season sets, I go through and mark what I've got and then check to see if I can discard any tapes. So far that's worked for the space I've allotted for the Video/DVD. And I just discard the ones I can. I don't use the VCR for recording anymore as I've got both a PVR and a DVD recorder, and some of the tapes are old enough that the quality would be very bad.
no subject
For the homemade tapes, I had the issue of 6-8 hours per tape, not necessarily all one show, so about 4-5 years ago I rather energetically made a database by tape with what was on each tape. Show name, season, episode number etc. I also have a field for whether I have it on a commercial tape/DVD or don't need to replace it. As I buy season sets, I go through and mark what I've got and then check to see if I can discard any tapes. So far that's worked for the space I've allotted for the Video/DVD. And I just discard the ones I can. I don't use the VCR for recording anymore as I've got both a PVR and a DVD recorder, and some of the tapes are old enough that the quality would be very bad.