This revelation might not be very new, but I stumbled across it recently, and it has totally changed our board game storage and accessibility, so I felt compelled to share it with those who were living in the dark like me!
Our house has always LOVED board games; we have at least 4 different varieties of Monopoly and about 3 varieties of Clue games. During internet outages and technology punishments, we revert back to board games! (So if there is ever a zombie apocalypse, my family will probably be in the kitchen playing Zombie-opoly to pass the time!)
Seeing that we love board games, this means that our collection has been growing, and our small closet was beginning to run out of room. Not to mention it made it so that getting games down was really hard, and you would end up with at least 1-2 full boxes raining down upon your head. Not to mention that because they were kept at the top of the closet, they were completely inaccessible to the kids without an adult.
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Recently I saw a video on TikTok showing how the user ditched boxes and put their games in organizing bags. During a recent, unfortunate stay at Driscoll Hospital with my daughter, I noticed the play room at the hospital also organized their games in plastic containers. This was much less bulky than keeping the games in their original boxes. After these two observations, I decided now was the time to do a board game overhaul, not only of the bulky boxes, but making them more accessible to the kids.
Now that they are getting older, they are capable of playing age-appropriate games without mom and dad always in the mix, but if they can not reach them, I can’t really expect them to pick a board game over technology.
The first step was getting on Amazon and ordering these bags. I personally just ordered the large bags, but they come in a ton of different sizes, and you could mix and match the sizes.
Once you have the bags, take everything out of the game box, making sure you have instructions and all the game pieces (this is a good way of pairing down if you find some of your games no longer have all of the necessary pieces to work). For smaller pieces and cards, I put those in sandwich bags before transferring them over to the new game bag.
If you feel like you need to label the bags, you can cut the name off of the board game box and tape it on. I personally cut a small side off and place it in the bag; since they are made of mesh, you can see inside of them pretty easily. Or if the instructions displayed the name big enough, I would skip this step altogether.
When I got to games like Monopoly, I panicked just for a minute because I realized that the money-holding trays were handy for the treasurer. But luckily for ALL of my Monopoly games, these large bags were able to hold the plastic trays from inside the box, and all of the pieces just fine!
All in all, I transferred 19 games from their boxes to these bags. And set up a gaming area in our newly organized office space. I chose a few games to display because I was fond of their boxes, or I just thought they worked better staying in their original boxes. And I have a tote to hold card games that have always floated around the house with no real home.
Good-Bye Board Game Boxes!!!
I hope you take this as your sign to think of a new way to store your board games, not only as a space saver, but to make them more accessible for the whole family to unplug and reconnect!
