Organize Your Games

Inspired by Gerald Ward's photo uploads of his beautifully organized board game collection, I thought I'd create a discussion all about how we all keep our games collections organized. Or, in my case, how we don't:

So feel free to post your photos, tips, tricks, etc. in this thread. I'd love to learn a thing or two about best practices for board game storage.

Some of my own questions:

  • What to do with games that can't go upright?
  • What about older games with terrible packaging?
  • Oversized games (Descent, Twilight Imperium)?

Tags: board games

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Daniel Donahoo on March 26, 2012 at 7:15pm

I tend to use a Bag of Holding...they even come in various sizes depending on the size of your collection.

Though Jonathan Liu would need at least two

;)

Permalink Reply by Michael Harrison on March 26, 2012 at 7:25pm

Oh, man. If only.

Actually, Jonathan needs to post pics of his setup. He's got a nice basement totally devoted to games, and everything is neat and tidy. I wish our house was bigger and we could devote an entire room to the hobby. One day...

Permalink Reply by Daniel Donahoo on March 26, 2012 at 7:29pm

Yeah. I hear you...maybe I should share our "backroom set up"...because we have the new baby (who is crawling now) and the 8 and 10 year old are LEGO mad (choking hazard)...I had a whole workbench built for them to use to build and display on, to get the LEGO off the floor...they have all their gaming consoles and computers and everything in there...it is awesome. I had my office in there, but had to move out...I was too easily distracted...

Permalink Reply by Jonathan H. Liu on March 27, 2012 at 11:46pm

All right, let me find a photo of my basement setup...

Well, this one was taken mostly for the Portlandia sign which I've cropped out, so it's not the best angle or focus. My set up keeps shifting, of course, because I get review games and then make room for those, and reorganize. It's not nearly as easy to organize as my bookshelves, because I don't store things vertically for the most part. And the shelves aren't all the same height.

Heavy games need to go on the bottom, and you want to avoid putting heavy small boxes on top of lightweight large ones, or they'll crumple them. I try to group loosely by game type: 2-player games, deck-builders, co-op games, party games, and so on. But there's a lot of "other." Most card games are in shoeboxes, something like 20-30 games per box (especially those that I've ditched the original boxes and put into home-made tuckboxes). When the box is ridiculously oversized, I take the game out of the original box and make a smaller box for it if possible, though I do that less now than I used to due to time constraints. However, I probably need to do that more than ever.

The wooden shelves on the left are a combination of games I haven't played and games I have for review that I haven't written up yet.

I did hear one guy on board game geek who kept everything in big ziploc bags in plastic tubs. He'd put all the boards/rulebooks/flat things in one batch, alpha by game, and then all the bits and things in another big bag, labeled, and then organized alphabetically in batches. Sounds like a great way to store a lot of games in a much smaller area, but then what do you do with all those game boxes? Still gotta have a place to keep them, unless you ditch them entirely.

Permalink Reply by Michael Harrison on March 27, 2012 at 11:50pm

Does the idea of throwing away the boxes make you break out in hives?

It might be kind of freeing...

Permalink Reply by Jonathan H. Liu on March 28, 2012 at 12:00am

Yep, you got it.

Well, particularly because now I'm at the stage where sometimes I want to sell/trade those games I don't play as much anymore. REALLY helps to still have the original box.

Permalink Reply by Jonathan H. Liu on March 27, 2012 at 11:46pm

Actually, I think one Type IV should probably do it for now. I don't know that I'm over 250 cubic feet yet...

Permalink Reply by Nicole Wakelin on March 27, 2012 at 9:25pm

We have so, many, games. They have a room to themselves, nice little shelves, bags of holding and Plano boxes for all the bits, but they come alive at night like in Toy Story and gradually make their way to the floor. I usually discover this while carrying something large that blocks my view of the floor at which time I stumble/drop kick said game across the room.

Permalink Reply by Dave Hale on March 29, 2012 at 6:45pm

I don't have many table top games but a friend of mine buys the Maxwell House International Cafe cans to hold his card games (eg. Fluxx, Munchkin, etc.)

I'm not sure if this link will work right, but I think it will go to an image of the cans I'm talking about:

http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1024&a...

Permalink Reply by Gerald Ward on April 4, 2012 at 2:34pm

Thanks for the nice words regarding my collection & its storage. A few things that I do:

- In cases of bad insert design, I frequently re-design the insert. You can see a few of my redesigns in my photos on Board Game Geek: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/images/boardgame/all/page/1?username=e...

- I buy small plastic bags in various sizes from Michael's craft store and use them frequently. I loathe loose bits & pieces.

- I usually place Velcro dots on two sides (left & right) between the lid & base in order to keep everything together when the games are on their sides. You can see a shot of one of the dots in the picture: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/797084/small-world.

- Large games or oddly-sized games tend to get stored flat. They are stored in drawers and in some of the other cabinets in our dining/game room. Descent gets its own drawer, as does Fortune & Glory

At this point we only have a little over a 100 games, so the storage requirements are ridiculous yet.

Here's another shot of the built-in unit. All of those drawers & cabinets have games in them:

(FYI, that dark wood box on the stand is my Arkham Horror collection, and the light wood box above it is the super-deluxe Catan 3d set).

Permalink Reply by Jonathan H. Liu on April 4, 2012 at 2:42pm

Ah, I like the velcro dots idea. All of my games are stored flat, though I also seem to have a good number of oddly-shaped boxes. Also, according to BGG I'm apparently up to 400 games now, so ... I just use those big cheap wire shelving units—which is okay because it's down in the basement. I don't think my wife would ever let me keep those out in the living room.

Permalink Reply by Gerald Ward on April 4, 2012 at 3:14pm

If we had close to the size of the collection that you have, we would have to look at alternative storage options. I tend to trade out games on BGG for ones that I want to try, so we seem to be in a period of stasis for now.

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