This past weekend, I decided to go through our game cabinet and do a bit of decluttering and organizing. It was time to say goodbye to some games that my kids have outgrown, and I wanted to move some games to our downstairs family room. We hang out more downstairs during the summer (it’s cooler down there, after all) and I wanted to make it easy to choose games over the T.V. (We’ll see how that goes.)

Here are a couple of after photos of the freshly organized game cabinet in our family room.

Game cabinet

For the downstairs games, I allocated two shelves on the bookcase. I asked my son which games he was likely to play this summer, and which ones made sense to play downstairs. He chose Risk and Monopoly since these games take longer to play…and it would be nice to be able to keep them set up between game playing sessions. (This is much more possible downstairs than upstairs in our main living area.)

Game shelf

I put smaller games like cards, checkers, and Pit inside the antique Coca Cola tray I picked up at the flea market last month.

Organized games

It was a fun project that hopefully will encourage some family game playing. 🙂 If you’re planning to organize your games sometime soon, consider these tips:

  • If you store games in their original boxes with the boxes sideways, it will be easier to access any game you want to play, instead of just the game on the top.
  • Store a score pad and pen with your games.
  • Keep your games as near as possible to where you play games. This just makes it that much more likely that you will choose games over another activity.
  • Use containers such as baskets or metal buckets to corral small games such as card games.
  • If you don’t want to see games on open shelves, consider disguising them with containers like I did with the Coke tray. You could also use canvas bins or wicker baskets, or store your games behind closed doors in a cabinet.

How do you organize and story your games? I’d love to hear from you.