Merging libraries and home sharing

Question

What is the most efficient way to consolidate and share a library consisting of music from two Apple IDs?
Our setup is this: My husband and I each have our own iTunes accounts, plus we have imported our own CDs to our respective libraries. I have a Mac laptop with limited space; he has an HP Touch/Vista with lots more space, plus we have a TimeCapsule that is also our wireless router, and we both have iPhones. We'd like to have all our music in one place at home, not on my laptop, and be able to access all of our music and sync any of it to our iPhones (I am ok with only syncing at home when I am connected to the network, if need be), and to be able to buy new music on any of the computers or iPhones and ultimately have it sync back to the main library. What is the best way to do set this up, and what do we have to do to maintain it?
Before iTunes 9, I tried third party syncing solutions combined with putting everything on the TimeCapsule and having both iTunes libraries set to TimeCapsule. However, the connection to TimeCapsule is not always available (have to re-login), and rather than giving an error when it's not available, iTunes just reverts to a local library, which defeats the purpose. So, it seems like we need to have a main library resident on the HPTouch (periodically backed up to TimeCapsule) and then do Home Sharing to give me access via laptop (without necessarily copying everything to it, only what I want at the moment) -- but then, how do we handle the two Apple IDs? If we authorize each other's computers to use music from either ID, will I be able to see (via home sharing on my laptop) the whole "main" library all at once when I log in with either ID? Or will I still have to login (via home sharing) with two separate IDs to see the music corresponding to each? Or am I making this too complicated?

Answer 1

Update: it seems to have worked to do this:
1. Authorize both computers to use both of our IDs.
2. On both computers, use one ID (in this case, my husband's) to start home sharing.
3. On my husband's (desktop) computer, in iTunes, view all music not on that computer, select all and copy to library, so that the whole combined music library is now contained on his computer.
4. Export my playlists and import to his iTunes (I put his playlists and mine in separate folders for ease of use).
The latter step makes it possible for my smart playlists to grab everything in the library (which resides on his computer), and that playlist is still accessible on my laptop via home sharing, without my having to have all the music in the playlist reside on my laptop.
Now I should be able to empty out my library if need be (to save room on my laptop), and only load up the songs for the playlists I want to have mobile access to -- just click on a playlist via home sharing, and tell it to copy all the music from the desktop that I don't have on my laptop.