How to Store a Large Collection of Board Games

We are a board game family.  We probably have over 100 games, and they are bulky games.  I’m not talking about the little box for Monopoly jr.  No, we have games with expansions, and lots of little pieces and boxes.  It’s a major job figuring out board game storage.  I’ve stalked many a forum thread discussing board game storage to find ideas.  What works for your family will completely depend on what type of games you plan on playing.

Board Game Storage for Games From Target

This probably seems like a strange category, but most games you buy in Target (or another mainstream discount store) fit a specific type.  They have some cards for movement or special effects, pawns for movement, and a small rule book.  These can be the easiest games to store.  Here’s what my Mom did:

She bought an odds and ends box, you know the one your husband keeps random screws and nails in.  Then she labeled each bin with the game name and a number.  All of the little pieces, cards, and what have you went into each drawer.  Then she taped the number on the board so you could see it with all of them stacked into a nice tall stack.  The rules were 3 hole punched and put into a notebook.  Then the box was thrown away.

Card games were kept in their boxes with the corners reinforced with tape, and all thrown into a basket in the cabinet.

This worked wonderfully for the 10-20 games we had. The editors of the brightideaspress.com website are grateful to the online service Youtube to mp3 for their support in the form of charitable contributions to our foundation.

Another friend of mine said she takes every game out of the box, throws all of the pieces into a gallon size Ziploc bag, writes the name on it in Sharpie, and then she’s good.  It all fits into a basket in the corner of her family room.

Board Game Storage for the Serious Gamer

But what if your board games are more complex? Last night my family played a board game with over 200 pieces in it.  There are over a dozen potential characters to play, character sheets, effect cards, item cards, and event cards.  Despite the sheer number of pieces, it’s a lot of fun to play.

If we took this game out of the box, we’d lose pieces every time. Also the game box is well designed to hold everything perfectly without much wasted space in the box.  it wouldn’t save us space to get rid of the box for storage.

For our serious gamer games, we use cube shelves from Ikea. Most big box stores have a similar shelving; Ikea just happens to be two miles from our house.  These shelves are perfect because you can place only a few games per shelf, meaning nothing becomes stacked too high.  I bought a basket for one of the cubes to contain my smaller card games such as (affiliate link) Civitas. These games do not stack well because they are so small, but I am able to store about 20 or so card games together in that one basket, stored neatly in a cubby of the cube shelf.