How to Organize Your Games

Do you have a game problem at your house like I do at mine? Our game cabinet was overflowing and a mess. After quite a while of that, I decided it was time to take matters into my own hands and organize our game cabinet.

In case you have ever wondered how to organize games and because I love organizing and writing about organizing, I’m going to share what I figure out with you.

I don’t know about you, but I like the after much better than the before! Surprisingly, this was a quick and easy project that ended with an organized game cabinet. Yay!

As you can plainly see, our games, movies and puzzles cabinet was a mess. We couldn’t even get the games to fit in the cabinet anymore. There are even games that are missing from this picture.

Before we go any further, you can see that the top shelves hold our puzzles and movies. I didn’t even bother to work on those this time. I wanted to keep this quick and simple. I will organize the movies and the puzzles another time and I will show you what I figure out when I get to those. 🙂

I start any organization project by emptying the space that needs to be organized. That way I can see exactly what I need to organize as well as the space in which I have to organize.

You think we have too many games? Ummm….exactly how did I fit all of those games into those cabinets. Oh yeah, that’s right, I didn’t! They didn’t all fit. Anyway, those are all the games we started with.

I decided to give something new a try something new with this game organization project. This pile is the pile of games we decided to donate as well as the boxes we decided to ditch.

I decided that quite a few of our games were in boxes that were totally destroyed or just took up too much space. The boxes had to go. I’ll show you what I did with those games in just a minute…first let me show you the after picture.

Ahhh…don’t you just feel better when you look at this cabinet? I sure do. It makes me want to come pick out a game and play, not run screaming from the room. Of course, it also shows that I still need to organize the movies and the puzzles….it is a process people, a process. We will get there. 🙂

In the past, I had organized our games by age level versus by size. This time, I decided that organizing them by size would work better to make everything fit in the cabinet.

This cabinet if my favorite. If you have read my blog for a little while, then you know I kind of have a thing for glitter and for chalkboard surfaces. When I was at Target looking for  a few containers for organizing this cabinet, I came across the bin that you see above. It was the perfect size for my cabinet. Ummm…it had a chalkboard surface….ummm it had to go home with me even though it was a little more pricey than I would normally spend.

I know you are wondering what I did with the games I took out of the boxes. They are in this cabinet. Some of them are in the chalkboard bin. The rest are behind it or in the plastic bins to the right of the chalkboard bin.

I put the little games and games, like Qwirkle, that were in a box that really didn’t need to be in a box, in my chalkboard bin. It was easy to label the bin with my chalkboard marker.

The chalkboard marker is fantastic for this project because it is a bit harder to erase than traditional chalk, so it won’t easily erase here, but I can erase it if we get rid of a game or add another game to this bin.

Games like Qwirkle, Rummikub, Pass the Pigs as well as spinners and dice fit perfectly in this bin and will easily stay organized.

For the games with boards and cards or just loose pieces, I used these plastic bins.

The bottom two were purchased from the organizing bins sold at Target. The top two are actually food containers that I got from the food storage container area at Target.

I wanted to use my space to the max and didn’t want more of the larger plastic bins(those on the bottom). I needed something smaller, so the food storage containers worked and fit perfectly on top of the other plastic bins.

As you can see, I got out my label maker and labeled both ends of the boxes, so no matter what side they get put away on the label will show.

The games with boards that got taken out of boxes, go behind the chalkboard bin and the plastic bins. I used my Label Maker and labeled them near the fold so that they are easy to find as well as grab to get out. They are stored with the fold up, to make reaching them and getting them out easier.

If a box had directions printed on it or one of those inserts in it and we needed them, I cut the box to get the directions. The directions were placed inside the folded board. Easy to find them because they are right with the game.

As you can see, we now have an organized game cabinet! Yay! I completed this project a couple of weeks ago and it has stayed mostly like this. Of course, it has gotten more use because we can find games now and we aren’t scared of them or the cabinet!

Next time I will tackle the movies or the puzzles…so stay tuned for more ideas to help you organize around your house.

Do you have a monster of a game cabinet or closet? How have your found to keep your organized? Do tell…you know I love hearing your ideas!

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