Billy Bookcase celebrates its 30th birthday today (1st October) - no, really! I have to say if you want some cheap storage that looks good then look no further than good old Billy Bookcase from Ikea.

Personally I own hundreds upon hundreds of DVDs and it's very difficult to find something that looks half decent that will hold them all. I am not a huge fan of Ikea - I find some of their stuff over priced for what it is - MDF and flat packed mostly. But Billy Bookcase is a great product actually.

Billy Bookcase comes in many different shapes and sizes and they all come flatpacked. There are lots of colours as well (beach, pine, black, grey, white, red etc) and you can buy extra shelves for the more common colours - the wood coloured ones, black and white. You can leave them as simply bookshelves or add some wood or glass doors to the front - the limits are endless - so much so that most peoples Billys will look completely different. I have the simple shelving in grey and alas they didn't do extra shelves in grey. I think mine measure about 2m high and about 80cm wide. I bought two of them - only about £20 each I think at the time - and used the shelves from the second one to add shelves to the main one. If you buy one of these Billys for DVDs, put two extra shelves in and this will give you maximum storage space for DVDs - holding I think about 400.

It's easy to put together - instructions are clear and all the holes are already where you need them - even the ones for extra shelves. You can make the shelves any height (apart from the top and bottom which are fixed) you want which is handy if you are using each shelve for something different. You may want a screwdriver handy though!

And if you buy a Billy and decide in a few months you need another shelve you can buy an extra bit called a topper to fix to the top of the unit giving you extra height and extra room. I have heard that the designs have changed if you have a very old Billy, so it might be harder to fit together.

You can also fix the Billys to the wall like you can with most shelves but I found mine was quite sturdy enough to stand up on it's own - saved drilling holes in the wall of a house we are moving out of fairly soon! My Billy is almost full - I have one more shelf to fill at the bottom with DVDs - and it's very sturdy and I never feel like it will topple from the weight. There were no nicks or scratches on it either so I feel its well built.

Overall I would highly recommend this - it's cheap but doesn't look cheap - people always admire mine and say, oh god I need something like that for my DVD collection so badly where did you get it. Good old Ikea!!!