Board Game Storage Solution
When I saw this project on the HomeGrown Traditions blog, I knew this was a perfect storage solution to our overflowing and disheveled board game closets. Yes, that’s plural. We have two closets that house our large collection of board games. Normally, I’d say everyone can benefit from an organization project. However, this particular project is not. If you have a lot of storage space, you don’t have that many games and your boxes are in good shape, then I’d say leave it alone. They stack nicely and you can read them all easily. Done. This is solution is more of an exercise in space saving and efficiency than anything else. Now that I’ve talked you out of why you should even continue reading this post, I’ll go ahead and start. (I’m a blogging champion if you have by noticed) .
The Problem:
As I mentioned, we have a TON of board games and about half our boxes looked like they’ve recently been run over by a school bus. Twice. We store toys and games in two different areas of our house. One is a hallway closet that was filled to max with just games. I forgot to take a “before” picture so I had to screen shot a video from an instagram story I took a year ago. Funny enough, this is an “after” video from an organization project I had just done. It doesn’t look bad, right? The problem is that it occupies critical space in a hallway closet that I could certainly use for other things.
Our second area is in our bonus room. It is supposed to be just toys for the kids, but it has ended up housing the overflow of games that we have collected. With three kids spanning 6 years and two adults that love playing games, we have quite the collection.
The Solution
We took each board game out of its box and put them in these XL document bags. This size works for our largest games that are bulky and games with actual boards, like Checkers. We cut the boxes up, leaving only the “face” of the box and any instructions to package in the bag. I also ordered a second slightly smaller set of bags for our medium size games. My suggestion is asses your inventory to see what size bags you need. What I learned: it’s better to have a bag too big than too small.
Here is where we added our own little twist to this project. On HomeGrown Traditions, they stored their bags in a basket which calls for the label to be seen from the front. It looks great, both in form and function. Our cabinet calls for the bags to be stored sideways so we needed to see the label from such a view. So, I added these label tags to each bag so we could see which game was which at a glance. Easy solution. ($6 for a 50-pack).
The Result
In short, the result is SPACE. Precious space. We managed to get all of our games out of the hallway and into our bonus room cabinet. It’s amazing how much packaging is used to house very small games/boards/pieces. Our board games take up a third of the space they used to. I now have almost half my closet empty in my hallway AND room to spare in the bonus room cabinet. Hallelujah! It’s a board game miracle. All for under $40.
The drawback to this solution is that you lose that vertical visualization aspect of stacked boxes. But for us, the tradeoff of space was WELL worth it. If you are in the same boat, this project is a GAME CHANGER. Pun intended. Here is a link to my Amazon storefront with our favorite activities/games that have been entertaining us throughout this quarantine season. Happy gaming!
Disclaimer: I love sharing all the things that that make my life easier, better, more enjoyable. These are 100% my own opinions and my real life experience. That said, I do participate in affiliate programs where I may earn a small commission from purchases made from these links. I appreciate you following along!
~ Kim