Decluttering and Organizing Games
Board games can be a major source of clutter and mess. Here are a few simple ideas to help you decide what to keep and where to store your games.
Welcome to Day 26 of our 30 Day Decluttering Challenge! Today we are addressing board games.
We enjoy games, but last year I got rid of about half of them because they were taking up room and not actually being played.
I have always stored all of the board games/puzzles/card games in the lower cupboards of our dining room hutch. It is practical, because we usually play them at the dining room table, and I didn’t have enough dishes to bother storing in it.
Because we often add new games for Christmas or birthdays, the hutch was stuffed to the gills. That’s why I got rid of so many last year. Even with fewer games, today I found that they were still a little out of control and I was not a fan of where they were being stored. And, I may or may not have a dish problem in the kitchen now, so I was thinking that it might be a good idea to make some extra room in the hutch.
This is what it looked like:
Kind of a mess.
My kids have a hard time getting things back in the cupboard in an orderly manner. Many of the games are old and the boxes are breaking. If you look really carefully, you can probably also tell that in my last weeding out of the games, I actually did put a few dishes into the hutch. Which made it harder for the girls to get the games in and out.
Here’s how I organized the games:
How to Declutter and Organize Board Games
1. Gather all the games you have into one pile
I pulled all of the games out and put them into a pile in the middle of the dining room. This makes it much easier to see what you’ve got and make the necessary decisions about what to keep and what to give away.
2. Go through each game to ensure that all the pieces are there
I found out that Monopoly was missing its board. I looked up in the playroom and anywhere else I thought it could possibly be. No dice, er, board. Hmm. Kind of a strange thing to go missing, but oh well, this is one game you definitely can’t play sans board. Buh-bye Monopoly! (I hate that game anyway.)
A few other games were missing small items that didn’t really affect play. I also found game pieces in the wrong boxes, so it was good to sort that all out and make sure everything was in the proper box.
3. Get rid of the games your family doesn’t use
After going through the games, I decided to get rid of Cranium and a couple card games we never play.
The rest of the games we play often enough that they are worth keeping.
4. Put like games together, and come up with practical storage solutions for your family
I put all the card games together (they are always in such disarray). We have a high boy in the dining room as well, and the top drawer used to hold all of our electronics chargers before we made our charging station.
That top drawer has since morphed into a junk drawer, as drawers without a specific job are wont to do. So, I decided to give it the new and improved job of holding card games and a few of our other smaller games like Bananagrams, Pass the Pigs, and Tenzi.
I sent the Twister game upstairs to the playroom where the kids’ games live. The rest of the games fit neatly into the far corner of the hutch.
5. Enjoy your newly organized games and find one to play!
I found a few games that I think we should play today. We haven’t been playing many games lately, and they are a nice Sunday afternoon activity.
Finally, I am still not sure what to do with the Ravensburger 1000-piece puzzle that was in there. We put it together this summer (that thing was on our dining room table FOREVER) and I doubt we will ever do it again. But I paid good money for it.
Would you just listen to me? I’m breaking all my own rules. Obviously, it’s time to let someone else have the joy of putting that nice puzzle together. I will put it into the giveaway box just as soon as I hit publish on this post.
Do you have more games than you know what to do with? Today’s assignment is to deal with that. You know the drill!
Where do you store your board games?
Find all of the posts in this 31 Day Challenge here: A Place for Everything: 31 Days to Less Clutter and More Peace.
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Good Morning, Lara!
We built a play room above the carport area of our workshop so I don't have to look at the mess in my house. My house is a mess enough. This way, our boys, soon to be 17 and a 21 year old, are responsible for how it looks.
That settles MY game decluttering!
Sounds good to me! I am all for the shut-the-door policy!